THE GREAT PUMPKIN DROP 2025
X-SCREAM DAY on Campus
CSFD PARTNERS WITH THE COLORADO SPRINGS SCHOOL TO SHOWCASE STEAM PROGRAM
The Annual Pumpkin Drop is back and expanded for 2025!
What does it take to engineer a system to keep a pumpkin intact despite sustaining a 75-foot free fall? That's what Lower and Middle School students at The Colorado Springs School (CSS) are hoping to discover during a STEAM-themed event called The Great Pumpkin Drop on Wednesday, October 29, 2025, at 1:40 p.m. The entire day is full of spooky-themed STEM events titled "XSCREAM Day", a take on the annual STEAM-themed day for Halloween.
This year's event is being spearheaded by CSS's new Director of STEM Innovation, Dr. Bradley Hayes, who is working in coordination with the school's experiential education curriculum and the local Colorado Springs Fire Department to bring this hands-on engineering challenge to life.
In 2025, this annual school day event continues to include a public event after school hours where the campus opens up to the community, participating as a city-wide 1,000 Neighborhood Gatherings COS initiative with a free Trunk or Treat, food trucks, and lawn games at the historic Trianon building on campus from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
During the school day portion, the Great Pumpkin Drop represents a long-standing partnership with the Colorado Springs Fire Department to support students through this hands-on engineering project. This year, all Upper School (Grades 9-12) physics and engineering students have spent their recent classes learning the physics and engineering principles through their own 'water bomb drop' experiment. They will spend the next few classes leading up to XSCREAM Day working directly with the Lower School Division and Early Childhood Center students. The Upper School students will teach their younger friends some basic physics and help them follow the Engineering Design Process – ask, imagine, plan, create, improve – to design and build their pumpkin protection. Through this mentorship, CSS is building stronger connections between school divisions and further strengthening the school's community spirit.
Student teams have been provided with the same pod construction materials. Building on past years' success, students may use any additional recycled materials of their choice to construct their vessels. Each class's creation will be hoisted up a CSFD fire truck ladder to 75 feet in the air and then dropped to the ground. Will it survive the fall?
Students anticipate and observe the success of each pod and whether their pumpkin makes it safely to the ground (or not)! In addition to prizes for surviving the drop, this year there will also be prizes for classes who demonstrate Kodiak Spirit by decorating their boxes to show their CSS Pride. The engineering principles students learn here connect directly to real-world applications, as Experiential Learning is integrated into all aspects of education at CSS. Experiential learning such as The Great Pumpkin Drop has been the cornerstone of the CSS curriculum serving children from pre-kindergarten through grade 12.
The Great Pumpkin Drop is part of a broader campus-wide event called XSCREAM Day, a program to bring hands-on, STEAM-themed events that include Science, Culture, Reading, Engineering, Art, Math for all grade levels. Teachers and students will be rotating through seasonal and Halloween-themed stations throughout the day including Snapology, and MESO Science Truck (Mobile Earth & Space Observatory) to name a few. During the evening, the campus is opened up to the public for various activities during the Trunk or Treat, hosted by our school community and alumni.
In every grade level, students are consistently applying their learning out in the world with community partnerships such as this one with CSFD. We are engaged in the community and the region, and in the higher grades, on global projects. The anticipation for this year's event to put everything into practice is building now!
About The Colorado Springs School (CSS)
The Colorado Springs School is the leading independent (private) day school serving students from PreKindergarten through grade 12 in the Pikes Peak region. Through superior academics and mentoring, CSS prepares students to think independently and to meet the needs of a dynamic world with leadership, ingenuity, problem-solving skills, and personal integrity through hands-on learning. Visit css.org. The school is located on a historic estate property of 28 acres at 21 Broadmoor Avenue, Colorado Springs, CO 80906.
