This is a great STEM activity to do in the month of October. I love giving my boys materials and just letting their imaginations go. For this challenge, I gave them pumpkin candy corn and popsicle sticks (and jumbo craft sticks for my 4 year old). I told them they needed to use the sticks and pumpkins to create a tower. I try not to give too many directions but rather let them explore and learn through trial and error.
You will need:
candy corn pumpkins
craft sticks (either jumbo or popsicle sticks)
The Challenge
Create a tower using sticks and candy corn pumpkins. You can give your kids a time limit. For example, you could say, “You have five minutes to create a tower.” You can also give a height requirement by saying, “Your tower must be 7 inches tall or 5 stories tall.” Now let your kids’ engineering imagination go wild!
I also made it very clear that they couldn’t eat any pumpkins until the end. This might have been the hardest challenge for them!
I like to ask questions as we go. Knowing what is going on in their little minds is always so fun. My 7 year old said he wanted to start off with a strong base so he was laying out rows to make a bottom. He does change his mind later and decides to make a square base, but that is the beauty of keeping this an open ended challenge.
Part of the way through, my son’s tower partially collapsed so we talked about how to make it stronger. His response was to eat the stems off the top of the pumpkins to make them flatter. Either he is an engineering genius or tricked me into eating the pumpkins before we were done!
I was very impressed with his 7 story tower!
My younger son is four and had his own method for building. He wanted to make a bridge and later started eating the tops off to make them flat on the top, like his older brother.
After several failed attempts at making his tower more than 2 stories, he decided to create what he called, “A pumpkin garden.” I’ve got to love his creativity.
