STEM Activities Using Cranberries

Cranberries are such fun little fruits, and kids might not have exposure to them as actual fruits (unless you live where they grow). They’re also fun to use in STEM activities this time of year, so let’s check out some cranberry STEM ideas.

Little kids and those who haven’t been exposed to cranberries as berries before will enjoy exploring them in a cranberry sensory bin. Fun Early Learning has ideas for how to set up a sensory bin using cranberries and what else to add.

Build structures with cranberries and toothpicks like in this idea from Artful Parent (the post shows grapes but there’s a link on the same post that mentions doing it with cranberries, but it links to this same URL so you’ll just have to imagine what it looks like.

Lots of classic STEM experiments can be done with cranberries. For example, the dancing raisins experiment can become a dancing cranberry experiment, like is shown at Little Bins for Little Hands. They used craisins (dried cranberries) for this experiment, but you can also try it with regular cranberries and see if that works.

Little Bins for Little Hands has a nice collection of cranberry activities including a more detailed activity building with cranberries and toothpicks, sink or float, sensory bin and more.

Did you know you can make invisible ink using cranberry juice and baking soda? Get the recipe from Kid Minds. They made their own juice from fresh cranberries; I’m not sure if purchased cranberry juice would be acidic enough for this to work. But you could try both and compare and make it a full science experiment where you talk about why it does or doesn’t work.

While you’re making your own cranberry juice you can also use it to make cranberry scented playdough. This idea is also from Kid Minds and is another fun way to play with cranberries.

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.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply