Halloween STEM Ideas

Whether you love or hate it, Halloween (31 October) is a popular event and younger children are celebrating it with their families. Why not support children’s interest in Halloween by exploring inquiry-based STEM learning activities that encourage them to share ideas, hypothesise, engage in trial and error, and participate in hands-on exploration?

Read on for early STEM learning ideas that will support you to explore Halloween in an age-appropriate way in your own teaching practice. The following activities are not intended to be completed in a day, so take your time with them and allow the children’s interest to lead the way. You can also use our inquiry cycle to help guide your planning. 

Planning other Halloween STEM activities for your children? Join Little Scientists’ Facebook group “Early STEM Educators Network” to exchange engaging STEM ideas with other educators about Halloween and STEM education.

ACTIVITY: Explore a Jack-o’-lantern (0-8 years)

Jack-o’-lanterns are often used for decoration, but what’s inside these iconic symbols of Halloween? This activity is a great way to support children’s descriptive language. 

Materials:

🎃 Halloween carving pumpkin (if not available in your area, use a Kent or Queensland Blue pumpkin, or even a melon!)
🎃 Sharp serrated knife
🎃 Ice cream scoop or large spoon
🎃 Bowls
🎃 Paper
🎃 Pencils or markers
🎃 Paper towel (optional)
🎃 Ziplock bag (optional)

Instructions:

1. Show the children the pumpkin and ask them to imagine what it looks like inside. Collect their ideas through drawings or by recording what they say.
   • For older children: Ask them to draw what they think the inside of the pumpkin looks like.
2. Cut the top off the pumpkin. You can also do this before doing the activity with the children as pumpkins can be tough to cut.
3. Look at the inside with the children and encourage them to describe what they see.
4. Use the ice cream scoop to take out the pumpkin’s innards and seeds. Place the contents in bowls.
5. Encourage the children to feel the innards and seeds (NOTE: Remove the seeds for children under 3 years to minimise the risk of choking). Have them describe how the contents feel, what they look like, and how they smell.

Extend the activity: Separate the seeds from the strands of pumpkin and place these on a damp paper towel. Place the paper towel in a Ziploc bag and tape it to a window that receives sunlight. Watch the seeds germinate over time. Encourage the children to share what they might see and when.

Extend the activity: Try taste-testing the pumpkin innards by roasting the pumpkin, pureeing the pumpkin innards, or roasting the seeds (click here for a recipe).

ACTIVITY: Spooky, scary noises (2-8 years)

Use children’s curiosity about Halloween to engage them in an acoustics exploration, in which they use a range of everyday materials to create spooky noises.

Materials:

The materials will depend on the children’s idea about what might make scary noises. Below are just some ideas, but you should look at what you have on hand in your environment and encourage the children to try those things out.

👻 Things to make moany noises (like the “OooOooO” of ghosts!), such as paper towel or other tubes, cylinders, and funnels.

👻 Things that make stompy noises (like footsteps), such as shoes with different soles, wood blocks, and different types of floors (tiles, wood, or linoleum). You can explore rooms with different acoustics such as quiet, echoey, or loud.

👻 Things that make scraping noises, such as cabasas, guiros, or sticks run along different surfaces.

👻 Things that make swishy noises, such as plastic bags, newspaper, and leaves.

Instructions:

1. Discuss and make a list of what the children find scary and what noises those things make.
2. Encourage the children to think about how they could recreate those noises using everyday objects in the room or the natural environment.
3. If needed, demonstrate how to recreate one of the noises. For example: Wobble a sheet of cardboard to make the sound of thunder.
   • Watch this video for some inspiration. Consider what’s appropriate to share with school-age children up to the 3-minute mark (NOTE: After the 3-minute mark, the video includes ideas for how to make more violent sounds, which won’t be appropriate for a young audience).
4. Encourage the children to select the materials and trial different techniques to make sounds. This exploration can go on for days or even weeks!
5. Document the children’s ideas and attempts. You may choose to use an audio recorder to capture the sounds and play these back to the children.

Extend the activity: Encourage the children to develop and act out their own spooky story. Some children can be the actors and some can do the sound effects. If you’re working with children under 2 years, you can modify this activity to provide opportunities to explore the noisemaking attributes of different materials without the direct link to spooky, scary noises. Talk to the children about the types of noises you hear them make with the materials and introduce sound-related vocabulary, such as “squeaky”, “rustle”, “clomp”, “clank”.

ACTIVITY: Exploring cobwebs (2-8 years)

A popular decoration during Halloween, cobwebs are spiderwebs that have not been disturbed for a long time and have gathered dust. Use this activity to explore spiderwebs with the children and discover the amazing engineering skills of arachnids.

NOTE: Fake, plastic cobwebs often sold for decoration are not encouraged due to the risks to small birds and insects. Check out the Humane Society’s website for more ecofriendly ideas.

Materials:

🕸️ Small hoops, ideally the size of a small plate (secondhand shops often have inexpensive wooden embroidery hoops). You can also use paper plates with a large circle cut out in the middle.

🕸️ String of different sizes, such as embroidery string, woolen yarn, nylon rope, or twine.

🕸️ Pom poms or other small items to represent the insects that will be “caught” in the spiderwebs!

Instructions: 

1. Discuss spiderwebs with the children: Where have they seen them? What have they noticed about spiderwebs? Why do spiders make webs?
2. If children have not yet identified this themselves, you can share that spiders are fabulous engineers because they build webs to help catch other insects for food.
3. Hunt for spiderwebs in your outdoor area and encourage the children to look at elements of the webs that help spiders catch their food. You can use books such as “Spiderwebs and Spider Silk” or watch videos such as this one from BBC Earth to look at spiderwebs more closely with the children.
4. Invite the children to create their own webs! Tie a piece of string to a hoop and encourage them to weave their own spiderwebs, for example by twisting the string around the hoop.
5. Use the pom poms to represent insects “caught” in the webs and test the effectiveness of the web. Do the insects fall through the gaps? Encourage the children to consider how they can better catch the pom poms in the web.

🐝 By the way: Education Technology Specialists, one of our Early STEM Education Award sponsors, is giving the Little Scientists community 20% off their entire Bee-Bots and early childhood range! Click here to browse and use the discount code littlescientists25

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