With Halloween only a few weeks away, now is the perfect time to start planning some fun Halloween-themed science activities!

Many that you see across the internet seem to aimed at younger children, but don’t underestimate the joy that simple, fun activities can hold for students of all ages.

Below is a list of some of my favourite Halloween STEM activities – have a look and give some of them a go!

Ghost Rockets

This activity, from Growing a Jeweled Rose, is a very simple but fun activity. It’s a variation on the classic film-canister rocket experiment, where you paint the canisters to look like ghosts.

To make it a bit more of a challenge for older students, have them research and plan their design for rocket using different materials and shapes, as well as the chemical mix for the ‘explosion’.

STEM Halloween Olympics

This fantastic page over at Plans For A Better Tomorrow is a treasure trove of simple STEM activities, all with a Halloween twist!

Activities are varied and can easily be up-challenged:

• Designing bat wings (paper air plane challenge) – set specific design restrictions and success criteria such as minimum distance, number of turns mid-flight, or going through a hoop.
• Creature catcher (net designing) – the biggest challenge here is to provide limited resources and the winner is the one who catches the most creatures
• Bone bridge (engineering design) – increase challenge by seeing which bridge can hold the most weight or is the most stable in an ‘earthquake’
• Treat toss (catapult building) – great physics aspects by dictating required angles, judging accuracy, and asking the students to calculate the velocity of the treats
• Ghosts in the graveyard (pulley-system to lift ‘ghosts’) – students can calculate the forces involved, and provide calculations before building

Dissections

Why not go all out and dissect a brain, heart, or eyeball? You can make it a bit more creepy by having spooky music playing all lesson!

Static Electricity Ghosts/Bats

What a fun activity! Simple grab a balloon and some tissue paper, and see who can make the ghosts dance the best!

Spooky Lava Lamp

Who doesn’t love a lava lamp? Turn it a bit creepy with the addition of food colouring, and keep it simple with super cheap materials. You could make it a bit more challenging for the students by testing different types of materials and predicting the outcomes.

Flying Teabag Ghosts

A fun experiment about convection currents, made more challenging by testing different materials to see if they will fly or just burn.

What fun STEM Halloween activities do your students love?