The month of October is a unique time of year. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the eerie and unusual. Children dress up in absurd costumes while neighborhoods get draped with ghostly decorations. It’s a good reminder that humans have always been drawn to the strange and the unusual. It can tickle our brains and ignite our curiosity. For educators, October is a treasure trove of distinctive learning experiences that can not only inspire student creativity but demonstrate just how fun learning can be. After all, words like “strange” and “unusual” are just terms we use for what we don’t understand yet.
Cultivating this weirdness is pivotal to pedagogy. Schools need students who are driven by their innate curiosity, natural creativity, and practiced critical reasoning. So, why not leverage the October season and encourage students to embrace the strange, the spooky, and the unexplored? One useful resource that educators should certainly take advantage of is the Blue Apple Timely Topic: Spooktacular STEAM. For years, Spooktacular STEAM has provided teachers with frightfully fun and free activities for this spookiest of seasons. Now, Blue Apple has expanded on this popular resource by customizing the content for different grade levels. Whether you’re instructing tiny trick-or-treaters or mysterious middle schoolers, you’ll find activities that meet your students where they are — and challenge them to exercise their curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking skills in an engaging, hands-on fashion.
Here are just a few fun activities that will stimulate out-of-the-box thinking in students when educators download Spooktacular STEAM for free:
- Engin-eerie Activities: Engineers are responsible for many of the wonderful things we have in our world. This activity has students use their engineering skills and explore the design process by immersing them in these fun, freaky engin-eerie activities. Then, students reflect on how testing their ideas out can help make everyone smarter and lead to greater change!
- Mysterious Mathemagic: Math can be magical — but that’s not always how it’s taught! This investigation uses jaw-dropping mathemagical tricks to capture your students’ curiosity and launch a thought-provoking exploration into the wonders of math!
- EEK-o-systems: Imagine that you’re all alone. Your surroundings are strange and unfamiliar. Suddenly, you hear a noise! What’s that lurking just out of sight? The EEK-o-systems activity takes advantage of this spooky situation by having students learn fun facts about creepy, crawly creatures that they might find frightening. But maybe, a little knowledge can help them understand that what might seem spooky is really just a super adaptation to a really cool environment!
- Gak Attack!: Students love slime. In Gak Attack!, they’ll use their curiosity to launch simple scientific investigations that teach students to think and act like scientists in a fun, hands-on way!
October is the season of the comically ghoulish and eerily extraordinary. What better place to celebrate its charm than in the classroom? Seize this exceptional STEM opportunity and let this Spooktacular season light up your teaching space.