With Halloween coming up students can’t help but feel excited and a bit distracted. Rather than trying to fight them why not embrace the holiday for a few days and try some of these great activities in your classroom.
1. Build a spooky Halloween Town
It’s a great Stem activity that also encourages teamwork and a positive classroom culture. You can brainstorm as a class what you want to include in your spooky town and then divide up who will build what. Here are some great step by step guides for making trees and houses. They can help your students know how to start.
Milk carton houses– (printable patterns)
2. Candy Math
Go get some cheap candy the day AFTER Halloween or let kids bring in some of their own candy for this activity (you know they are going to bring it to school anyways). Use the candy to work on math skills like graphing, adding, dividing etc. Their reward for a job well done is to eat their candy! Talk about a great incentive.
3. Mystery writing!
I love teaching about mysteries during the Halloween season. If you start at the beginning of October then by Halloween you can have a mystery reading party. Turn the lights down and have students share their spooky stories with their friends! So fun. This is a resource I made a few years ago to help my 5th graders organize their mystery step by step.
Spooky Stories for younger students click here.
4. Observing pumpkins
Bring in some pumpkins and have students make observations about them. They can measure them, draw them, test if they sink or float. You could also use their pumpkins to work on adjectives and descriptive writing.
Pumpkin investigation – Freebie for K-2
Pumpkin investigation– Freebie for 3-6
5. Science potions
I wrote a whole post about integrating Harry Potter and potions into your curriculum here. It’s a great opportunity to talk to students about mixtures and solutions, chemical changes etc.
