Make a Solar System Out of Pumpkins

Now that Halloween is over you might be inclined to toss out your pumpkins. But pumpkins are a valid decoration all the way through Thanksgiving, and there are still learning activities you can do with pumpkins (even beyond the classic rotting experiment, which is a great thing to do with your carved pumpkins).

Teach Beside Me shares the idea of using a collection of pumpkins of different sizes to make your own model of the solar system.

This is a great one to do if you have space outside like a driveway or sidewalk where you can draw the orbits for the different planets. If you have a lot of space and want to get fancy you can calculate the relative distance between the planets and the sun and actually measure out a scale model of at least the inner planets (the distances get pretty huge pretty fast). I found a model using a 6-inch sphere for the sun and a building on the Tennessee Tech campus to measure the distances, or you can use the calculator at the Exploratorium to make a model based on the size of your sun. (Of course if you’re just doing it for fun you can alter these distances, for example doing 5.8 inches between the sun and Mercury instead of 5.8 meters as on the Tennessee model.)

Kids can paint and decorate the pumpkins to look more like the planets, and you can use larger pumpkins for larger planets and smaller ones for smaller planets, even if they don’t perfectly fit the model. You can use this time to talk about the characteristics of different planets, and how in your day Pluto was a planet. Draw in the asteroid belt, add the moon, or whatever else you like to make your model.

Check out all the details at Teach Beside Me, and if you’re looking for more pumpkin-themed STEM activities, check out the post here.

[Photo: Teach Beside Me]

20 STEAM Educational Gift Ideas For Kids

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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