Candy Corn STEM Towers

Saturday, October 17, 2015
My school has 2 STEM nights per year where teachers offer different STEM activities in their rooms for the students to complete.  Since Halloween is approaching, I was looking for something Halloweenish for students to work on…and I found the perfect activity from CREATE TEACH SHARE.   Her Candy Corn Stem Investigation sheet, was just PERFECT for our STEM night!  Students had the opportunity to build the TALLEST possible tower using trial and error.  I did make one modification to the investigation.  I used marshmallow shaped candy corns.  When I tried to do a run through with regular candy corns, the candy corns kept shattering.  I think candy corns may have been doable with my 5th graders since they could have built and smooshed the candy corns together for the towers to work.  However, since I was hosting the activity for a large group with students of all ages, I found marshmallows SHAPED like candy corns. The marshmallows were flexible and malleable so they worked perfectly! 


The recording sheet from Create Teach Share started the investigation perfectly! The GOAL of the investigation was for the students to build the TALLEST structure.  The students were not allowed to TOUCH the materials (toothpicks and marshmallows) for their investigation until they had formulated a written plan.  After they wrote their plan, I asked the students to sketch what they ENVISIONED their tower to look like.  After all of their preparation, students were ready to build!
STEM, Candy Corn Investigation
Take a look at how some of their towers turned out.
Example #1)
STEM idea, October STEM ideas, Halloween STEM
 Example #2)
Candy Corn Activity, STEM Candy Corn Tower
Example #3)
Fall Experiment, Fall Science Experiment
Example #4)
Marshmallow Towers, Marshmallow experiments, 5th Grade Science, 5th Grade Science Investigation
I really LOVED the recording sheet.  On the back, the students were able to sketch how the towers actually turned out and they were able to reflect on their work. This was perfect for the moth of October.  Do you have another favorite Halloween or Fall Science Experiment? I would be interested in hearing about it.  Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, or bloglovin'.

7 comments:

  1. Yay!! So glad you were able to use this activity! Looks like your kiddos had a lot of fun!! We learned the hard way last year about the regular candy corns. My poor kiddos were barely able to make a cube!! Definitely using the marshmallows this year!!!

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    1. Thank you Rebecca for the AWESOME printable! It made the activity so much more rigorous. The parents were really happy with it too (especially the parents who were teachers at other schools!) :)

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  2. I love this! Thanks for sharing. Can't wait to try it. Where did you find those cool marshmallows?

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    1. Hi Liz! So, after the candy corn disaster…..I panicked and went to Target to find gumdrops but low and behold, I found these candy corn marshmallows for $2.49 a bag in the Halloween section. Plus, they go a LONG WAY! 3 bags should be the PERFECT amount for a class of 34. :)

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  3. Did your marshmallows need to be stale to work?

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  4. About how many pieces of the marshmallow candy corn did you give to each group?

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