Check out these 22 STEM Halloween activities for kids! From chemistry to optical illusions and laws of gravity, STEM pairs perfectly with this holiday.
Halloween is a perfect time of year for students to embrace their inner mad scientist or potion-maker. Whether as a fun Halloween STEM classroom activity or festive at-home craft for the whole family, this guide is complete with the perfect Halloween-themed STEM activity for every age.
Each of these ideas is low in cost and requires a combination of household items and items easy to find on Amazon or a craft store. Check out our ultimate guide of STEM activities for kids and teens looking to get into the holiday spirit (no pun intended, of course).
Important note: each activity should be completed with adult guidance and supervision.
Best Elementary School & Pre-K STEM Halloween Activities
Spooky Slime Activity
Time for a mad scientist experience! This hands-on activity is ideal for kinesthetic/ tactile learners. Kids can get creative by adding sparkles, colors, and googly eyes for their spooky slime finished product.
Dissolving Candy Experiment
This experiment gives the scientific method a delicious, Halloween candy twist. Encourage your students to think aloud and make observations as they test out different liquids to dissolve candy corn. As a bonus, this activity has delicious (non-dissolved) leftovers!
Pumpkin Volcano
A science fair staple gets the ultimate, spooky makeover in this activity. Introduce chemical reactions in a tangible, fun way by adding your student’s favorite colors into the mix with food coloring for some seriously cool effects.
Spider Web Engineering
This activity integrates art with STEM concepts, creating an ideal STEAM activity. Teach your students about angles, symmetry, and more with this Halloween craft.
Optical Illusion
Bring Halloween to life in this optical illusion activity. Kids can choose a seasonal image like a pumpkin, witch in flight, or ghost to create a mind-boggling illusion to show off to their parents.
Halloween LEGO Challenge
Encourage your little one to put on their engineering caps and build something awesome with LEGO. From simple Halloween structures to an elaborate haunted house scene, building with LEGO’s is a great way to encourage learning through STEM.
Watch “Frankenworms” Wiggle
Make sure to save a few to eat! In this fun little chemistry experiment, little ones will love watching the frankenworms squirm.
Dancing Ghosts & Static Electricity
Is that a haunted house, or is science at play here? Discover static electricity in this hands-on experiment that really helps get kids in the spirit of things (no pun intended).
Best Middle School STEM Halloween Activities
Magic Wand
Muggles and wizards alike will love this LED activity. Hit the lights for some wizardly fun with circuits and crafts. As a bonus, connect this activity with a creative writing activity or other academic content for a full day of learning!
Brew a Bubbling Witch’s Cauldron
Double double toil and trouble, brew a cauldron full of bubbles! This fizzing experiment is as fun to make as it is to watch transform into a witch’s potion.
Pumpkin Race Track
This activity takes pumpkin carving to new heights. Create an at-home racetrack that your elementary or middle schooler will love. Momentum and velocity, anyone? This activity is great for some friendly competition, and perhaps even candy prizes for speed and design.
Light-Up Haunted House
Even haunted houses need great contractors, right? This imaginative activity encourages kids to explore circuitry and their planning skills. Not only are these educational to make, they are also excellent Halloween decorations.
Pumpkin Catapults
If there’s a better way to teach laws of motion and gravity than by making things fly, we haven’t found it yet. Build pumpkin catapults with your kids to test out their ingenuity and to illustrate core scientific principles. If doing this with siblings, add a competitive element and see whose pumpkins can fly the farthest.
Cast a Refraction Charm
Little Harry Potter fans will love casting their very own spells that magically (or rather, scientifically) appear before their eyes.
Monster (Themed) Equation
The key to making math fun to learn often lies in creative spin on an important concept or skill. Sick of solving for x? Try solving for goblins and witches instead! There are tons of math activities out there that use important skills in fun, engaging activities like corn mazes and graphing a witch’s flight.
Levitating Density Tower
The finished product of this experiment looks like a creation pulled directly from a mad scientist’s laboratory or potioneer’s cupboard. Each liquid in the tower has a different density and will float to tangibly illustrate the concept.
Engineer a Bridge of “Bones”
This engineering challenge is fun to build and would make a great competition. See who can construct the strongest bridge!
Plant a Pumpkin Garden
Green thumb and Halloween friendly, planting a mini pumpkin garden is an adorable way to decorate the house. Enjoy learning about germination, plants, and enjoying the fruits of tending a lovely garden.
Best High School STEM Halloween Activities
Pumpkin Bath Bombs
Taking time to de-stress is so important in teenage years, and this easy bath bomb DIY offers an easy way to do that. Using natural ingredients, create an at-home spa night with a pumpkin bath bomb.
Exponential Growth with Zombies
Preventing a zombie apocalypse seems like a pretty motivating reason to learn about exponential growth. Whether applying this concept to algebra or chemistry, a fun activity like this can go a long way in making a core concept enjoyable to learn.
Create an LED Halloween Costume
Give a classic costume a techy DIY makeover! This glow-in-the-dark Jack-O-Lantern is easy, fun, and incredibly cheap to make. Our tech-o-lantern costume is just one of many Halloween DIY projects that can get teens into the holiday spirit.
Launch a Ghost Rocket
A spooky twist on the mentos and diet coke classic, teens will have a blast watching these ghost rockets launch!
Even though Halloween might look a little different this year, kids deserve to have a fun-filled, memorable holiday. We are always happy to help kids and families enjoy some safe, STEM-filled fun!
For more ideas on how to celebrate a wonderful Halloween, check out the best free Halloween apps for kids, DIY spooky wreath decoration, Halloween birdhouse DIY, and 11 ways to make socially-distanced Halloween fun.
