I love Halloween. I mean, I really love Halloween. Fall is my favorite season, and Halloween is the best Fall holiday.
I also love STEM challenges. So of course I had to mix these two loves and create a fun Halloween STEM day for my class.
I am teaching a mixed age class this year that has students from 4th to 8th grade. So today, I divided the students into younger and older kids to see which group could be the most creative.
After our first STEM day, I had learned a little bit about this class...they all want to build without any time to think and prep. So today, I read the first challenge and showed them the materials they would have to build with, but they had to use good old paper and pencils to plan their ideas. They were not allowed to open their baggie of materials for 5 minutes. I must say that they really did a much better job this time.
Because I teach this class only once a week, I chose to teach four challenges in one day. The first challenge, Build a Spider Web, was done by the entire class. The kids were given a very limited amount of supplies to build the web.
Some of the students chose to use pipe cleaners for the edge of the web, some used the craft sticks and one group used two chairs. Most of them decided to use the "fuzzy" yarn or cotton balls to provide structure for the spider rings to grab onto. We did have a small problem with this activity. When the adults threw the spider rings at the web, the tended to bounce off instead of stick. And then of course there was the problem of my bad aim. It worked better if we stood close by and gently tossed the rings at the webs.
After we did this "whole class" challenge, I divided the class into 3 groups. Each group was given a different challenge. Each group subdivided into two or three smaller groups to work together.
Group one did our "Ride on the Broom" challenge. They had to build a broom that could carry the witch's cat safely across the room. Group two did our "Hanging Bats" challenge. They were given bonus points if they could make it balance on its nose and hang upside down. (We had done another balance activity last year and I was hoping they would remember how to do this) And our last group did the "Bubbling Brew" challenge. This group did well making a cauldron that could hold a lot of pom poms, but now so well at holding liquid.
I really love these STEM challenge days in our class. It is a great way to let the kids work cooperatively. It also gives them a chance to build, test and redesign their ideas. It let's them see that people don't succeed the first time they try something. There is often frustration and error on the path to success. Many of the teams had to go back to the drawing board. And the ones that didn't, did not do well. They will learn from the other children and next time, they will work a little harder.
We only completed four of the challenges today. If you like these ideas, you can find the entire set of 6 challenges "STEM in a Baggie: Halloween Edition" in my Teacher Pay Teachers store.
Happy Halloween,
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