181. 3 Spooky Science Experiments To Try

Welcome to the Elementary STEM Coach podcast. I'm your host Naomi Meredith, a former classroom teacher, turned K through 5 STEM teacher and coach. With over a decade of experience teaching and a master's degree in STEM leadership, I'm here to coach you throughout the year to help you gain back more time to create innovative experiences for your students.

You all know I love a good theme and when it comes to pretty much every holiday, I am all about it. In fact, if you are watching the video version of this episode, I have a spooky in quotations sweatshirt that I absolutely love.

I downloaded the template off of Etsy, and then I made my own sweatshirt. So that's a fun little hack if you need something in a pinch.

But I have three spooky science experiments that you can try with your students, or if you are doing a spooky presentation, maybe you're doing something at Trunker Tree

or something for your school. These are very, very easy to prep, and they are a lot of fun, and show off some fun science.

I recently presented these three experiments at my old school that I taught K-35 STEM. One of the families asked me if I could be the featured presenter for their Cub Scout group.

And they actually had a whole lot of kids and it was a lot of fun to see some of my students from the past and meet some new ones and some little siblings.

It was a lot of fun. And of course I decorated the table. I brought in some fun little Halloween and spooky decor.

And as the kids were coming in, they wanted to hear all about it. So I actually got to present in front of the whole group of kids, but like I said, you could do this

like a station rotation and all of that. So let's get into it. Any extra materials that I used that I can find the links,

I will link that in the show notes for you so you can grab them if you wanna try these yourself. The first spooky experiment that I did was a smoking pumpkin.

So I had one of those pumpkin buckets that you see for a dollar or two where you can go trick-or-treating in a little cauldron. And right before my presentation,

I went and purchased some dry ice. I was able to find dry ice at my grocery store. They had it where customer service was and I brought in my own cooler and gloves

to make sure that I didn't burn myself because it's very, very cold. And then I brought in some water bottles and I talked with kids about how you have

the three states of matter and I have the kids tell me the three states of matter, they've resided those for me solid, liquid and gas, the basic ones that we talk about in science and elementary.

And I let them know that usually when things turn from a solid to a gas, it will melt. And so you have the solid, it will melt, be the liquid and then turn into the gas.

But dry ice is different because dry ice is a solid, but it switches quickly from solid to gas when water is poured on top, creating this science explanation called sublimation.

And then the gas, which looked like smoke, came out of the pumpkin and the cauldron. The kids absolutely loved it. It's super mesmerizing.

You can move the bucket around and the smoke kind of moves around and it's super spooky. If you want to make it a little spookier, you can put some glow sticks in there as well.

So that's a really fun crowd pleaser. The dry ass is really thick. So I recommend if you have a hammer kind of breaking it up into chunks

and you should be good to go. The next spooky science experiment is Static Electricity Ghost. All you need for this one is a blown up balloon

tissue paper where you cut out some ghost shapes. I also drew cute little faces and a little bit of scotch tape. What you do is you tape the bottom of your ghost

to your surface and make sure that they can move around. Mine had a tablecloth when I did this and it kind of stuck to the tablecloth. So make sure just to add a little tape

on the end of the ghost and then the rest can move around. Then this was really fun. I went around and rub the balloon on the kid's heads

to build up that static electricity charge. After you rub the balloon on their heads, then float that balloon on top of the ghost. And all of a sudden they start popping up,

looking like they're floating. It's really cool because when you are getting that static electricity, when you are rubbing that balloon, The balloon's atoms are becoming negatively charged

where the paper ghost has positively charged atoms, though opposites attract and then it seems like those ghosts are floating up in the air. So this is really, really fun.

And the last spooky science experiment that you can try are rocket bats. All I did for this one is I bought a stomp rocket, very inexpensive that came with four rockets,

mine glowed in the dark, but you get a stomp rocket with your rockets and then I cut out some shapes of a bat. Now there are a couple of science things

that go along with this. I told the kids a little bit about bats and how they are nocturnal, where they sleep during the day and they hunt at night.

And I told kids that there is a spot in Austin, Texas where all of these bats like to hang out under this bridge and then when it becomes getting darker at night, all the bats will fly out at once,

which is so crazy. So I told them about that a little bit, how bats are helpful pollinators. And then I had a few volunteers come up

and they got to stomp on the rocket to make the bats or the little rockets fly in the air. We also talked about why this is happening and how this is demonstrating Newton's third law of motion

where every action has an equal and opposite reaction and how this is happening where a rocket is being launched in the air, There's all of that build up and once it's ready to be launched,

the rocket launches up and there's all of that, the equivalent same fire or blast coming out. It was actually really cute because the kids would stomp on the rocket and then the rocket actually launched out in the crowd and they're very,

very light and the kids are trying to catch it. So this was a lot of fun. Would you try these spooky science experiments with your students?