Fall STEM Activities

This Fall, enjoy activities to help get your students moving, creating, and thinking! Fall is the perfect time to embrace some STEM and get hands on with learning in a fun way that inspires excitement, creativity and a passion for learning. What better way to start the school year? These Fall STEAM activities for the classroom or home will have your students excited about learning.

STEM PROJECTS FOR FALL

Book with scarf and mitts and toque surrounded by colorful fall leaves holding a tablet. Overlay text says Fall STEM Activities

This article rounds out our seasons of STEM! Explore other seasons using STEM with our Winter STEM Activities, Spring STEM Activities and Summer STEM Activities.

Fall Equinox Lesson Pack

Don’t miss out on our Fall Equinox activity pack. 11 pages of lessons and activities to celebrate autumn! Includes: Reading passage, Fun facts, Complete the passage, Illustration Challenge of Solar/Lunar Events, Questions w/answer key, Code Breaker Puzzle, Fall Diary Pages and a Writing Challenge. Find it in our shop!

Fall Equinox Activities for Kids

Looking for a way to celebrate and learn during the Fall Equinox? We have gathered up lots of fun ideas for the Fall Equinox. Perfect for learning about the seasons and celebrating this day of balance and the first day of fall.

Celebrating Fall Equinox with Kids

Fall Decoding Challenge

Fall is a great time to embrace a little Fall STEM Activity with this early coding project that challenges students to decode and reveal compound words. Each word is all about the Autumn season to help build literacy, and confidence, even for struggling readers. Grab your copy of the Fall Code Breakers Compound Words challenge and start decoding!

Code Breakers with Fall Themed Compound Words For Elementary

Build Models To Explore The Changing Seasons

Get hands on by creating a spinning wheel of the year that shows the changing seasons. Challenge students to create a wheel that brings in some art elements to reflect the changes in nature as we move from one season to the next.

Celebrating the seasons - Create a Wheel of the Year that actually spins and learn about the seasons and months of the year

Then, using a flashlight and paper build a demonstration of how the changes in the orbit and tilt of the Earth in relation to the sun results in our seasons. The Fall Equinox is all about balance. How does that look with your model?

The summer solstice marks the beginning of summer, but what causes the seasons to change? Learn about the science behind the seasons with this experiment.

Why Do Leaves Change Colours Experiment

Fall is the perfect time to explore one of the great wonders of nature, the gorgeous changing colours of the leaves in fall. This is an amazing autumn science experiment that is relatively easy and can be used to make some gorgeous chromatography art pieces. The experiment requires only one ingredient, plus some leaves, to unleash some wonderful discoveries. Try this Leaf Lab today and explore the beautiful colours of fall with science as you explore the big question: Why do leaves change colour in fall?

Leaf Lab Fall Science for kids with leaves

Make a Harvest Pumpkin Battery

You may have heard of the lemon battery experiment or the potato battery experiment, but did you know you can also use pumpkins and other harvest fruits to build a battery? Even tweens and teens can get excited about creating a battery from a fall pumpkin! Using a LED bulb, wire, plates, and some pumpkins and other harvest fruits like squash, your students can convert chemical energy from the pumpkin’s particles through metal strips in order to power the light bulb with electrical energy. Use a multimeter to measure how much energy each of your fruits produce and calculate how much the energy is increasing with the addition of each pumpkin to your battery.

Fall Harvest Fruit Battery Pumpkins and Squash

Fall-Themed Slime

Kids of every age love making slime! Our favorite recipe uses clear glue, water, baking soda, and contact solution. To make it fall harvest slime, we brought in green, red, and gold glitter along with fall colored rhinestone, and fragrance oil that gives off our favorite fall smells! This slime is easy to make and so much fun to manipulate and play with. Parents and teachers can even get in on the fun!

Fall harvest glitter slime smells like a crisp fall morning

Falling Leaves Pudding Playdough

Similar to slime, this easy playdough recipe has a gorgeous falling leaves theme, perfect for fall. Great for your little ones. Turn it into a game to see how many leaves have fallen from their tree and build early math literacy skills, while addressing sensory needs.

No Cook Pudding Playdough Recipe that is Silky Smooth

Natural Balance – Bird Nest Scale

In the fall you can often find abandoned bird nests. Once you are sure the nests are abandoned collect them and challenge students to build a balanced bird nest scale using a rod or broomstick, meter stick or even a large stick from a tree.

Students will learn about weights, physics (fulcrums), balance and engineering in this project that will also engage their problem solving and critical thinking skills as they find the perfect balance for their bird nest scale.

It's time for an outdoor STEM challenge! Take your learning outdoors with this fun, natural fulcrum balance for some wonderful natural exploration and STEM learning.

Build a Bird Feeder or Bird House

I wish we had built a bird feeder and bird house earlier for our kids! They love seeing all the different kinds of birds it draws into our yard and learning about the biodiversity in our own neighbourhood. They are also becoming more attuned to the changes in the seasons. As fall approaches our birds are eating more and more as they fatten up for the winter. Definitely time to add another feeder! Here is a simple bird feeder we have made in the past.

Peanut Butter Bird Feeder Project

Apple Volcanoes

Apples are being harvested everywhere during the fall, which makes it a great time to do some Apple Science! In this project we created the coolest Apple Volcanoes that erupt in a beautiful rainbow of colours. This easy chemistry project is fantastic fall fun!

Erupting Apple Volcano Experiment

Candy Apples

Want a tasty way to incorporate apples into your fall activities? Do some candy science and create the most delicious Candy Apples. Encourage students to get creative and make their Candy Apples unique flavours and designs.

Candy Apples are a traditional treat and the perfect addition to our study into the science behind candy making. Learn science, chemistry, math and more.

Candy Corn Bath Bomb

Nothing says fall quite like Candy Corn! We brought some chemistry to our Candy Corn with this bath bomb making activity. Kids love exploring this acid-base chemical reaction and learning how to make this bath time favourite. Math and ratios also come into play as they make their recipe for the perfect amount of fizz! Kids will love explaining all about the science behind the bath bombs as they relax in the tub with their candy corn creations.

Bath Bomb DIY for fall that is Candy Corn inspired

Making Soap

The process of making soap can be similar to a kitchen science project. Kids will need to measure and weigh, then heat to change the state of their ingredients so they blend and mold. It is not a complicated process, but in today’s world the importance of handwashing can not be understated, so making some fun fall soaps is a fantastic idea! Here are some of our favourite DIY soap recipes for fall.

Pumpkin Pie Homemade Soaps with Whipped topping
Goat milk soap recipe that looks like candy corn for fall
DIY soap making recipe that is suitable for teens and tweens

Thanksgiving STEM Activities – Turkey Races

Thanksgiving is a big holiday in the fall and often involves classroom and home celebrations. This is a fun game that also teaches STEM and physics concepts with Balloon Races. Turkey Races are incredibly fun for all ages and the perfect Thanksgiving STEM Activities!

Turkey Balloon Races Thanksgiving Physics STEM

Build a Candy Corn Catapult

Kids will have a blast engineering and building their very own catapult. Then use their catapults to launch candy corn and other candies. Add in a little math by turning it into a contest to see how far they can launch their candy or set up targets to see if you can work the physics to land your candy in the pot!

Fall Activities for Kids

Want even more amazing fall stem activities? Check our our 31 Days of Halloween STEM Activities for inspiration to keep your kids excited about learning this fall as they countdown to Halloween.

Love Halloween? Love STEM? Celebrate the countdown to Halloween with our 31 Days of Halloween STEM Activities. A little Halloween STEM for every day!

Remembrance Day is on November 11, mark this important date with a special Remembrance Day project for kids. Includes a free printable.

Geocaching – Get out of the classroom and into the community with your students! There are millions of geocaches around the world. These are containers hidden with items and logbooks throughout the world. Students use a GPS-enabled device to find the geocache, and then leave other items behind as they sign the logbook. Geocaching integrates technology, science, social studies, and math skills along with critical thinking and teamwork. Invite parents to help with geocaching teams. This is also great for a school club!

Apple Science – Explore why apples turn brown and what you can do to prevent browning of apples in this fun fall science experiment that is simple enough for preschoolers, but interesting enough for your middle schoolers.

These Fall STEAM activities for the classroom will have students of all ages learning and growing during the fall months. Even teachers enjoy participating with their students in these hands-on, engaging activities! Enjoy!

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