There are few holidays that invite imagination and playfulness the way Halloween does. (And there are few holidays that can cause classroom management issues the way Halloween can!) With some planning, your classroom can balance learning with fall festivities. Grab your students’ attention and harness their excitement around spooky season by incorporating these Halloween classroom games and activities.
We scoured Pinterest for some of our favorites to inspire you!
Fun Halloween Classroom Games
Savvy teachers know there’s no shame in a classroom game! Just think about these fantastic reasons to incorporate play into your lessons:
- Games encourage even the most reluctant students to participate and practice skills.
- They can be adjusted and adapted for different ages, abilities, and needs.
- Students gain social and emotional benefits (like teamwork skills) during gameplay.
- Games are student-centered and allow them to take control of their educational experience.
Haunted Bingo
Ages: Kindergarten – 12th grade
If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you know that kids of all ages love bingo. This perennial favorite can be scaffolded and changed to match the skill level and needs of students. Bingo can reinforce matching skills, vocabulary, sight words, or other subject-specific learning. It can also be used to strengthen soft skills like listening, recall, and paying attention.
Jack-O-Lantern Dice Game
Ages: Kindergarten – 2nd
Create a gigantic Halloween-themed word search and challenge your students to solve it as a class. Incorporate it as part of your morning or after-lunch routine, include it in a classroom station, or stick it on a wall as an activity students can work on during downtime. Kick it up a notch by creating a giant crossword!
Giant Word Search
Ages: 1st – 12th grade
Create a gigantic Halloween-themed word search and challenge your students to solve it as a class. Incorporate it as part of your morning or after-lunch routine, include it in a classroom station, or stick it on a wall as an activity students can work on during downtime. Kick it up a notch by creating a giant crossword!
Pumpkin Math
Ages: Kindergarten – 12th grade
An orange cup and green popsicle sticks are an easy set-up for this math challenge. Customize the game with math skills your students are learning and reinforcing. This game can be executed as a class or used as a station activity.
Halloween Crafts for the Classroom
Need something to put on your walls for that upcoming Back-to-School Night? (Trust us, we’ve been there!) These creative crafts will keep your students invested and learning… and will brighten up your room.
Mummy Wrapping
Ages: Preschool – Kindergarten
Practice fine motor skills with your students. All you need is yarn and a cardboard cutout! While this could turn into a take-home craft by using glue or tape to secure the yarn, it can also be a reusable station activity so that students can practice again and again.
Pumpkin Patch Name
Ages: Preschool-Kindergarten
This activity is all about letter recognition and spelling the most important words out there — student names! Add fine motor skill practice by having students cut out their pumpkins and glue them together.
Spider Slime
Ages: 5th grade – 8th grade
Is there anything cooler than slime to middle schoolers? This spider slime craft can be adapted for use in a unit about arachnids or chemical reactions or as practice for measuring, following directions, or understanding the scientific process. (Add these spiders to the craft for a little extra creepiness!)
Bootiful Bookmarks
Ages: 1st – 8th grade
These free printable bookmarks will encourage your students in their reading goals. A bookmark project is perfect for filling classroom downtime with a productive, fine-motor skills activity that offers calming mindfulness benefits.
Halloween Activities for the Classroom
Infuse your October lesson plans with devilishly fun activities that are meant to support your learning goals. Use these Halloween-themed assignments jumping-off points, tweak them to fit your student’s unique needs, or slide them right into your lesson plan.
Spooky Experiments
Ages: Kindergarten – 8th grade
Lean into the bubbly, gooey parts of Halloween lore with kid-friendly scientific experiments. These ideas will have your students creating their own potions, stirring their cauldrons, and learning about their world through hands-on science activities.
Witches’ Brew Graphing
Ages: 1st grade
Introduce graphing to young mathematicians with this tactile and tasty take on trick-or-treating. It’s sure to be a lesson your students won’t soon forget!
Escape Room
Ages: Kindergarten – 2nd grade
Engage your students’ critical thinking skills with a fun (and challenging!) escape room mystery. Students will work as a team to return a stolen pumpkin and face the werewolf who took it.
Get to Know the Real Me
Ages: 1st – 3rd grade
Using writing prompts and illustrating their words, students will create a booklet about their likes and dislikes. Pair this activity with a book about make-believe or trick-or-treat to get students thinking about who they are– with or without a costume!
Candy Corn Counting
Ages: Preschool – 1st grade
Counting isn’t a sticky situation with this candy corn activity. Practice makes perfect … especially if students can eat their correctly counted candies! Are your students not a fan of candy corn? No problem! Switch it out for another seasonal candy confection. Anything, of course, that won’t melt or get sticky.
Vanishing Ghosts
Ages: 1st – 4th grade
Can packing peanut ghosts disappear into thin air? Grab some biodegradable packing peanuts, and then have your students make a hypothesis. Then find out!
Don’t forget: Adding a little extra Halloweeny-ness to your teaching should be a treat for you and your students. While you might be tempted to go overboard, keep your learning goals and objectives front and center while you plan. With a strong purpose and timely, themed activities to support the learning process, your lessons will be eerie-sistable!
Joanna Guldin-Noll spent years teaching at a Baltimore high school, pioneering the school’s first AP English Language and Composition course, garnering thousands in grants for her students, and teaching American Literature, honors, and recovery courses. With a Master’s in Secondary English Education from Johns Hopkins, she was an adjunct faculty member and portfolio coach for the School of Education’s master’s program and served as a consultant for educational start-ups. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband John and her puppy Albus.
