These Halloween classroom ideas will help you plan a Halloween season that your students will love and remember for years!
There are so many fun ways and creative ideas to celebrate Halloween in your classroom! Although not all schools celebrate Halloween, many do. If you can throw a big classroom Halloween party or sprinkle in some spooky fun throughout the month of October, your students will absolutely love it!
Halloween Classroom Ideas
There are many ways to add a little Halloween fun to your routine this month. Whether you want to turn your classroom into a haunted house or host the best class party, you're in the right place. There are tons of great ideas here to help you decorate your room, arrange some fun classroom games, and even tie these holiday festivities to your instructional goals.
Keep reading this blog post for:
- Halloween Classroom Activities
- Halloween Classroom Decorations
- Halloween Class Party Ideas and Halloween Games
Halloween Classroom Activities
Need to keep your Halloween celebration tied to the curriculum? You can still layer in some of your favourite Halloween activities to keep your kids on track! There are loads of Halloween-themed literacy activities and math activities which can be a lot of fun, and fit nicely into your lesson plans!
1. Potions Procedures
Do you teach your kids how to write procedures? Save those lesson plans for Halloween and have your kids write about making their own potion following this fun activity!
Both the potion writing templates are free downloads in my Freebee Library.
2. Spooky Stories
Plan a narrative writing unit right around Halloween and have your kids write a Halloween story about their favourite monster or craft a scary story that leaves their readers on the edge of their seats. They'll love adding this spooky twist to their writing!
I highly recommend setting up this writing station to help them know how to spell common words without having to ask for help every time!
3. Halloween Math with The Hive
Kids will love interacting with The Hive's Halloween apps! They have so many uses — counting, graphing, patterns, addition/subtraction. All with some spooky ghost friends and spooky backgrounds!
4. What should my teacher dress up as for Halloween?
Students will LOVE designing a Halloween costume for their teacher, themselves or a friend. This activity is also a great way to work on descriptive language skills, as students use adjectives and similes to describe their Halloween costume designs.
You can download these free templates from my Freebee Library.
5. Number Activities
You'll love these FREE Halloween maths activities! There are Halloween number mats, worksheets & clip cards for numbers 1-20!
6. Escape Rooms
Whilst escape rooms may not be appropriate for kindergarten students, for older students and even high school students, there are tons of Halloween themed escape rooms online! These can be the perfect Halloween game for older students, and you can find activities for every age group, grade level and content area. Plus, once you find one you love, you can save it for next year!
7. STEM activities
There are so many great hands-on activities that will help your elementary students learn how to think in different ways! Try these Halloween STEM activities to get some inspiration, and start storing away any random items that could come in handy e.g. rubber bands, tissue paper, ping-pong balls, paper plates etc.
8. Halloween Fast Finisher Activities
Source some fun Halloween-themed fast finisher activities for students to complete once they've finished classroom tasks. Some examples could be Halloween crosswords, Halloween find-a-words, Halloween colouring, Halloween maths & more.
Halloween Classroom Decorations
This is one of the easiest ways to celebrate Halloween, and you can make it as big (or as little) as you'd like! Keep your eyes peeled at Target, Kmart and the dollar store as there are often lots of cheap bargains! And be sure to invite your kids to help out - they'll love creating decorations for the classroom and showing their artistic side!
1. Host a Door Decorating Contest
It's so much more fun to celebrate when other classes get in on the fun, too. Host a grade-level or school-wide door decorating contest to help build classroom community while having a little fun at the same time.
You can make your classroom look like an old haunted house, a pumpkin patch, or a spooky graveyard scene.
2. Add Spider Webs
Stretch out those stringy spider webs and dot them with plastic spiders.
3. Pipe Cleaner Spiders
Make some DIY spiders out of pipe cleaners for a cute, not-too-scary activity within the Halloween theme.
4. Make a Pumpkin Patch
Go wild with the pumpkin theme. Have kids make or decorate pumpkins and add small plastic pumpkins all over the place.
5. Black Cats & Bats
Use black construction paper to make bats and black cats to hang from your classroom ceiling or to adorn your walls.
6. Popsicle Stick Frankensteins or Toilet Paper Roll Monsters
Break out the popsicle sticks and glue together make little monsters. Alternatively, use some old toilet paper rolls to make your monsters! These easy crafts are a cute activity to send home!
7. Paper Mache Decorations
Use paper mache to turn small balloons into little ghosts or pumpkins! Hang them from the ceiling or a wall display for a three-dimensional display.
8. Googly Eyes
There is no such thing as too many googly eyes! Add them to your classroom door, the light switch, the paper towel dispenser, or anything else. Your kids will love it!
I also love these googly eye stickers - so easy to use for decorations and craft activities!
Halloween Class Party Ideas
Whether you're a first-year teacher or you've been teaching forever, class parties are so much fun BUT they can also be a lot of work. So, if your school allows you to have a Halloween party, I highly recommend inviting parent volunteers to help with decorations, snacks (if your school allows them), and prep.
But remember - you don't need snacks or decorations to have a great time with your class for a Halloween party! So here are some fun ideas for your Halloween classroom party, with most not requiring any additional cost!
1. Dress Up Day / Costume Party
Who loves dress up days?! Have your kids dress up like a mummy, a bat, a pumpkin, a black cat, their favourite superhero, or whatever else to get your little monsters in the Halloween spirit.
2. Pumpkin Bowling
Decorate an orange ball to look like a pumpkin and paint empty water bottles like ghosts. Set up this simple game and see who can knock down all the pins in one roll!
3. Spider Race
Know the good old spoon and egg race? Use a plastic spider ring or small plastic eyeballs for a Halloween twist! This is also a great way to work on gross and fine motor skills!
4. Fill a Jar with Candy Corn
Have a contest to see who can get the closest to figuring out how many pieces of candy corn are in a large glass jar. Want an alternative that doesn't involve sugar? Fill a jar with another Halloween-themed item instead e.g. orange pom poms, spiders, pumpkin erasers etc.
5. Cookie Decorating
If your class party includes food, your kids will love to decorate cookies! If possible, invite your families to bring cookies, icing, sprinkles, and other decorations or supplies.
6. Halloween Sensory Bin
There are many ways to make fun Halloween sensory bins for primary students! Keep things tame by hiding plastic spiders and rubber snakes or make gooey sensory bags with floating eyeballs and other gross things!
7. Hot Pumpkin
For this twist on “hot potato,” turn on the music and have your class sit in a circle. Toss around a stuffed pumpkin or another Halloween-themed toy. Whoever has the toy when the music turns off is out!
8. Musical Chairs
Play your favourite Halloween songs and set up a round of musical chairs! When the music stops, whoever is not on a chair is out. Keep playing to find the winner!
9. Halloween Bingo
Print out some bingo cards and play a fun game as a whole class!
To make it Halloween-themed, print out bingo cards targeting any skill you like, then have kids use Halloween colours as they play this classic game. You could also have them try to make a jack-o-lantern face instead of a diagonal line as they cross items out.
Throw on some spooky music from a Youtube video for a little atmosphere!
10. Scavenger Hunt
I've yet to meet a class that doesn't love scavenger hunts. You can use them in so many different ways, and they're especially fun for Halloween! You can set little clues or even hide spooky math problems around the classroom to make it an instructional activity.
11. Halloween Playdoh
Create a station with orange, black, green, and purple playdough. You can have your little learners make different creatures or scenes or you can invite them to customise their playdough by adding different colours of glitter.
12. Candy Drive
We know our kids will get way too much Halloween candy, so what if we help redirect that sugar in the right direction? Host a candy drive, like a food drive, to see who can bring the most candy. Then, donate it to a homeless shelter or community organisation in your area to spread kindness.
This is just the start! There are countless Halloween crafts, decorations and activities. These Halloween classroom ideas will help you make this spooky season an October to remember!
