How many pumpkins can you sit on the gate? This Pumpkin STEM Activity will challenge your child’s skills of building and engineering this Halloween with just a few materials inspired by Five Little Pumpkins.
Here’s how to play this fall STEM Challenge with Pumpkins…
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Our Stacking Pumpkins STEM Activity was so much fun we continued on with an activity inspired by the book Five Little Pumpkins with this Pumpkin STEM Activity. To play this activity, all you need are straws, playdough and mini pumpkins.
Five Little Pumpkins by Dan Yaccarino
Here are some of my favorite pumpkin books
Pumpkin STEM Activity
This pumpkin activity works perfectly as an activity tray to set up at the kitchen table to keep your little ones tinkering this Halloween. One of our favorite books and songs for Halloween is Five Little Pumpkins so we challenged these girls to see if they could make their own gate for the pumpkins to sit on.
Here’s what you’ll need to get started.
Materials for Pumpkin STEM Activity
- Plastic Pumpkins or Mini Pumpkins
- Orange Playdough
- Paper Straws (like this)
- Scissors
Directions for Pumpkin STEM Activity
1. Set up the Plastic Pumpkins in a container for your child to pull the pumpkins from.
2. Then set out the paper straws. Using scissors cut some of the straws in half for the gate posts.
You could also use popsicle sticks for this activity instead of straws.
3. Challenge your child to put a fence that can hold the pumpkins. Let them know that they have the play dough to use as reinforcement for building.
For younger children, you can show them an example first.
Have fun playing this fun pumpkin activity for halloween as your child develops their imagination and building skills. I’d love to see how yours turn out so be sure to share on instagram too! Use the hashtag #eduspin!
Want more Five Little Pumpkin Activity Ideas, click here!
Five Little Pumpkins Song
For years my favorite versions of the song Five Little Pumpkins is on Raffi’s on his CD, have you listened to this one yet?
Here’s a few more versions of the song Five Little Pumpkins that you can play in the background while you’re building your Gate for Five Little Pumpkins.
You could make this into a literacy activity as well by making your own Five Little Pumpkins Book by writing out the words together for your preschooler to illustrate.
Join along for Pumpkin week with our Virtual Book Club for Kids Facebook group! Grab your weekly pumpkin lesson plan here!
Be sure to also take this Stacking Pumpkin STEM Challenge this Halloween too!
You may also be interested in these activities for your child…
Hannah Knecht says
Love this idea! Problem solving is a concept that is often difficult to “teach” to little ones, and this activity did just that. Love that you connected it with a familiar book too! “Halloween” or “pumpkin,” unsharpened pencils may be a great substitute for straws (and may provide more stability when attempting to balance the pumpkin on top). What do you say or do when your preschoolers want to give up after their first attempt? How do you keep motivating them to try many times and pursue perseverance?