Five Little Pumpkins STEM Challenge

The Five Little Pumpkins book is a classic Halloween or pumpkin themed staple for the fall season. Our Five Little Pumpkins activity is perfect to pair with it too! Whether you have passed counting to 5, you can still try out this fun STEM activity and see if you can get 5 little pumpkins to sit on the gate or fence. My son still fondly remembers this awesome story. We love pairing our pumpkin books with STEM activities, check it out!

FIVE LITTLE PUMPKINS STEM CHALLENGE

FIVE LITTLE PUMPKINS

What I love about this pumpkin STEM challenge is that it uses a few of my favorite things! First, we have freshly picked pumpkins from the pumpkin patch. Second, we have a great book to share together. Last, we get to use what’s in the recycling bin and the craft container.

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5 LITTLE PUMPKINS ACTIVITY

You will see our supplies below and you may notice we used paper tubes, clothespins, popsicle sticks, and wood craft planks. You could also use pieces of cardboard, and Duplo.

What else do you have in your recycling bin, from yogurt cups to styrofoam trays? There are tons of great options, and I specifically save them for these open-ended STEM activities.

YOU WILL NEED:

5 little pumpkins
Various building materials (see below)
Glue, tape, pegs etc.
Printable STEM Worksheets perfect for kindergarten and early elementary use!
Five Little Pumpkins book! {Amazon Affiliate link}

FIVE LITTLE PUMPKINS SET UP

Give your kids an invitation to design and build a gate to sit your 5 little pumpkins on. Put out various craft and recycling materials they can use for their STEM project.

Step back and let your kids test their design skills, invent possible scenarios, and figure out what needs to be changed for their project to be more effective.

Use our Printable STEM Worksheets if you want your kids to record their designs and the results.

FIVE LITTLE PUMPKINS CHALLENGE

The biggest challenge we had with this STEM challenge was the weight of the pumpkins. This was something my son picked up on after a couple failed attempts because the weight of the pumpkins and the lack of a really stable base was not working.

MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT: Build A Pumpkin Pulley

Through these failures, he was able to analyze the situation more critically and come up with an answer. I could have told him that the pumpkins were heavy, but I wanted him to figure it out. In the end, he came up with several solutions that supported the weight of the pumpkins (see below).

STEM provides awesome real life lessons that are so valuable for kids!!

Below, you can see a few ways my son successfully created a structure to support his five little pumpkins.

MORE STEM CHALLENGES FOR KIDS