While most schools do not allow Halloween costumes or trick or treating, or full out parties to celebrate Halloween there are still ways to incorporate Halloween or fall-themed activities into the school day to entertain kids. If Halloween falls on a school day, the kids are usually a little crazy with excitement. This could be a problem but I say, go with it. Harness that energy into something fun that might be a little out of the norm! Let's check out some fun Halloween themed activities for the classroom to keep students busy and excited for Halloween night.
Read The Hallowiener by Dav Pilkey to set the tone for the day. This cute story about a little dog named Oscar will get kids excited about the day's events. During shared reading time, you can pull in story elements, cause and effect, text-to-self connections and character development. After reading, you can then pull in a variety of activities and even have a hot dog during lunch to connect back to the story. Sounds good to me!
Aren't these little guys so cute? Well, they are also very useful. Use these tools or gift them to your students to use in their math toolkits. After reading The Hallowiener, you can bring the number sliders into math stations. I shared three different math station ideas in the post below.
Students can create this adorable little dog. Isn't this the cutest thing you've ever seen? This is a fun craft to make after students read The Hallowiener. Students can even create the craft as instructed or customize the craft by creating fictional stories. See how I incorporated this craft into our lesson by clicking the link below.
After we read the book, completed the Happy Halloweenie craft, students could create a pumpkin patch scene. Oh my goodness! The kids loved doing this! Each scene is so unique! We wanted Happy Hallowiener to go somewhere and the pumpkin patch was the perfect place.
Using these DIY Journals is always a good idea. It doesn't matter what day it is. I like to let kids use these books especially during holidays. It brings an element of fun and breaks the monotony of regular paper. After we completed Happy Hallowiener, we glued the puppies to the cover of the book. Just this one simple act gave the kids excitement about actually writing inside the book. You can see how I incorporated these journals into our writing lesson by clicking the link below.
Since we can't do much for Halloween, this idea is perfect for a little student gift. I love to give something to the students to remember the fun learning we had and to actually have something useful too. You can attach this free printable I created to the wiener dog number line and a little doggie lollipop. They will LOVE it!
A holiday in the classroom without themed mini-erasers is just not complete! You can use these mini-erasers for so many things. Ten-frame Chart activities, pattern activities, multiplication activities, graphing, really just about anything in Math.