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

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

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