Halloween activities in the classroom can make October highly engaging while keeping students learning. I’m sharing favorite Halloween activities from classroom teachers who know the ropes.
I asked some of my teacher friends to share some of their favorite Halloween activities. I even added a few of my favorites. Check out these 25 fantastic ideas for celebrating Halloween in the classroom.
- Build a haunted house out of construction paper. It must be 3 stories tall and stable. It can lean, but it should not fall down. Judge: most spooky, most stable, most creative, most detailed, etc.
- Graphing lines to catch ghosts or zombies.
- Read Aloud “The Raven” then watch the Simpsons’ version. You could even watch a serious version before the Simpsons to compare and contrast the poem with the film.
- Read Aloud Spooky Stories Options: The Raven, Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, Room on the Broom, Stella Luna
- 2-Sentence Horror Stories. I love these. Talk about challenging and engaging! Some examples include the following: “I woke up to hear knocking on glass. At first, I thought it was the window until I heard it come from the mirror again.” — therealhatman. Or “The grinning face stared at me from the darkness beyond my bedroom window. I live on the 14th floor.” — bentreflection …You get the idea.
- The history of Halloween. Kids are naturally fascinated by the history of things we just take for granted as a normal part of our lives. Why not add reading comprehension practice and text annotation work into the mix?! Learn even more October teaching ideas for the classroom in this blog post.
- Compare and contrast Halloween to Day of the Dead. Use a graphic organizer and as you read about each day, note the similarities and differences.
- Add Monkey’s Paw unit to your Halloween activities for the classroom.
- Roll-A-Story-a fun game where students either roll numbered dice and each number relates to a different setting or roll dice with prompts already on them (find them here). They then roll for a character, and then finally a plot. So if they roll a 1 in the character roll, it may be a witch. For the setting roll, they roll a 2 and it’s a swamp. In the plot roll, they roll a 6 which is all magic is lost and so is the character.
- Find the mystery number. You can give clues: “I’m thinking of a number that…” or use task cards to give the clues. These are great for learning centers!
- Find a spooky podcast. I’ve included 3 links, but there are many more options. Unspookable, 13 Days of Halloween, Creeping Hour
- You’ve Been Boo’ed. Secretly leaving notes and treats for students and co-workers and then they have to do the same thing. It is like the Halloween version of Random Act of Kindness.
- Have the students watch a Halloween “short”, or part of a Halloween movie like The Headless Horseman. Stop the video at the climax. Then ask the students to write a different resolution by inserting the protagonist or main character into the scene. The students must show how the character’s traits help to resolve the problem.
- Haunted Haiku. And if you’ve never read them, Zombie Haikus are hilarious and perfect for older students! I’m not linking it as I’m not an affiliate (and they’re easy to find), just a fan of these books!
- Collaborative door decorating or coloring poster. See the scariest one I found below!
16. Games like Quizziz, word searches, word scrambles, puzzles, Color by number pages for grammar, vocabulary, or math (find some here)
17. Teach the novel Frankenstein.
18. Students create their own thriller story to present and class votes on the scariest story.
19. Students write about what the teacher should dress up as for Halloween.
20. What are you afraid of? This writing activity is a great Halloween activity for the classroom. Share your own fears first, then ask others to share. Keep a running list. This way students can view a list of ideas but also learn more about their classmates.
21. Ghosts & Bowling: Take old water bottles, pour white paint inside to coat the inside. Draw ghost faces on them with a Sharpie. The kids then bowl using a pumpkin as the bowling ball.
22. Freaky First Lines from published authors to use in their own stories. You can even have students bring in a few creepy lines that they share with the class. Create a list to display in the classroom.
23. Create art projects with symmetrical jack-o’-lanterns. Flip the eyes, nose, mouth out and glue on the other side. Use black and orange paper. Or my favorite is using colored chalk, torn paper, a piece of 8 x 11 blank white paper, and a black background. Students tear paper that has the width of the blank paper. They color the edge of the tear with colored chalk, place it on the white paper (best to start from the bottom and work up, and get a tissue to rub the chalk upward, creating an image on the blank page. Repeat.
Students can also tear another paper to create a different shape to then color and wipe up onto the blank paper. These make great sky backgrounds. Then, students decide on what they want the image they’ll create in front of the background using black paper (like a silhouette). Think spooky trees, haunted house, graveyard, etc. Glue these on and then glue the entire image to black construction paper to frame it out. Easy and beautiful! (if students can handle the feel of the chalk on their fingers.)
24. Dry Ice experiments – boo bubbles, color changing liquids, screaming tongs! Find ideas here.
25. Escape room challenges. Gather 5-7 activities you have (preferable close to no prep) and divide the class into small groups (no more than 4). List all the activities they must complete/solve. Each time they solve it successfully, they receive a top secret number or letter from you (that you assign to either spell out a word or a number code).
Some of my favorites to use are color by number activities, word searches, word ladders logic, short reading passages with a vocabulary challenge, task cards, shades of meaning words, building a catapult (this requires prep on your part) to shoot a soft, orange yarn ball (craft store) 2 sentence spooky story, & more. Find Halloween Idioms Task Cards here.
Learn even more Halloween activities in this helpful blog post for upper elementary teachers.
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