These Halloween classroom ideas give kids something they’re excited to read, write, and talk about while practicing the skills you’re already teaching. Some have a little spooky Halloween vibe, and some are just great for fall.
If October ever feels like all your first graders want to talk about is costumes, pumpkins, and Halloween, It can be frustrating when you’re trying to teach. But you don’t have to fight that excitement. You can turn it into learning and soon Halloween will become your favorite holiday!
Whether you’re planning literacy activities, adding something seasonal to your math lessons, or looking for fresh ideas for the month of October, here are 10 are easy ways to make learning feel like play and have the best Halloween!
1. Make a Pumpkin Life Cycle Book
The minute the calendar turns to October 1st, kids are seeing pumpkins everywhere. So here are some great ideas take all that pumpkin excitement and turn it into reading, writing, math, and science.
Start by teaching your kids about the life cycle of a pumpkin. My favorite book to read is Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington because it tells the story of Jamie, who grows his own pumpkin with beautiful watercolor illustrations that show the life cycle as his pumpkin grows.
After reading the story, have kids make their own pumpkin life cycle. I cut long strips of white paper and folded them like an accordion into four sections. We cut the corners to make the folded book look round like a pumpkin. On the first section, we glued a real pumpkin seed. In the next section, the kids used a little piece of yellow tissue paper to make the pumpkin flower. Then they painted a little green pumpkin and, finally, a big orange pumpkin.
To finish, have kids label each section. It’s a fun way to combine science, sequencing, and writing with an easy craft.
2. Use Spookley the Square Pumpkin for Math
Another way to use that pumpkin excitement is to read The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin. This is the cutest story about a little pumpkin who is square and all the other round pumpkins make fun of him. But when a storm starts blowing the round pumpkins through a hole in the fence, Spookley saves the day by blocking the hole. In the end, the farmer and the other pumpkins realize that being different can actually be a good thing.
Spookley The Square pumpkin is really great for Halloween math activities. Have kids sort different shaped pumpkins or measure pumpkins of different sizes. You can also practice simple subtraction using the story. Let kids use counters or pumpkin pictures to show what happened. It gives kids a way to act out the problem before writing the number sentence. You can also talk about how the pumpkins treated Spookley and what they learned about being different.
3. Have Kids Adopt a Pumpkin
One of the best halloween classroom ideas is to have your kids adopt their own pumpkin! This is a fun activity that promotes responsibility and gives kids something they actually want to write about. Here’s how I got started. I had the office call over the loudspeaker to tell us we had a special delivery and then the secretary brought in a basket filled with small pumpkins and a letter from Farmer Brown.
The letter said a bunch of baby pumpkins had just been born on the farm and Farmer Brown was so busy with the animals that he didn’t have time to care for them, so he asked our class to help. Each child got a pumpkin and a birth certificate to fill out. They gave their pumpkins names, made them a baby book and cared for their pumpkins for several days and wrote about their adventures.
At the end of the week, another letter arrived from Farmer Brown where he told the kids they had done such a good job that they could keep their pumpkins forever! The kids has so much fun and the best part was watching that excitement turn into writing practice while they learned about being responsible.
4. Write About How to Carve a Pumpkin
Another great idea for writing is to have kids explain how to carve a pumpkin. Bring in a large pumpkin and carve it with your class. Let them help choose its jack-o-lantern face and then afterward work together in shared writing to explain the steps.
Having that shared experience will make it easier for kids to practice procedural writing on their own. Have students use words such as first, next, then, and last to put the directions in order. Then add a little jack-o-lantern craft with googly eyes to go with their writing. I usually hung these in the hallway, and they made such a cute display for the Halloween season.
5. Try Spooky Spelling at Your Word Work Center
Spooky Spelling is a fun activity to put at your spelling center in October. I put our spelling words in a pocket chart so the kids could copy them and then they wrote their words with white crayon on the little ghosts on their Spooky Spelling worksheet.
Then they painted over the ghosts with watercolors, and their words magically appeared! They loved this so much. You can use this activity for sight words, heart words, or spelling words. Choose whatever your students are practicing so the Halloween fun supports your regular lesson plans.
They get the excitement of revealing their hidden writing while practicing words they need to learn. It’s also a creative way to combine literacy and art without planning a separate project.
6. Read Bone Soup and Write a Recipe
There are always a few kids who visit a haunted house or go on a haunted hayride in October. They’re excited to tell everyone about it, so here’s how to bring a little spooky season fun into writing.
Read Bone Soup by Cambria Evans. It’s about a hungry little skeleton named Finnegan who travels from town to town looking for something to eat. When nobody in one town will share their food, he starts making soup with just one bone. One by one, the witches and monsters get curious and add their own ingredients. Before they know it, they’ve made enough soup for everyone!
After reading the story, we listed some of the creepy ingredients that Finnegan put in his soup – like eyeballs and witches’ fingernails. I filled a plastic cauldron from the dollar store with plastic spiders, plastic eyeballs, and little bugs and each student took a handful and used those pretend ingredients to write their own bone soup recipe. Bone Soup is a fun writing activity and a big hit with my kids!
7. Disguise a Ghost and Write About It
Disguise a Ghost is a good activity to do at school, or it could be a fun home project for October. Kids get to use that costume excitement to create something and write about it. For this activity, I gave my kids a ghost pattern and put some trays of different Halloween costume patterns on a table. The kids could choose whichever costume they wanted to disguise their mini ghosts.
After creating their craft they used this template to write about their ghost. I used differentiated writing templates so students could work at their own level. My struggling writers only needed to write a couple of words, while my advanced writers could tell a story all about their ghost.
If you’re looking for Halloween writing prompts that everyone can participate in, this is a good one. Kids work on the same project, but the writing expectations can match what each child is ready to do.
8. Make Monsters and Describe Them With Adjectives
About this time in October, we were learning about adjectives in grammar. So we made our own monsters and described them with adjectives! We started by reading Go Away, Big Green Monster! This book is filled with describing words so it's perfect for teaching adjectives.
After reading the story, I set out trays of monster patterns for eyes, feet, horns, and other body parts. The kids came up and chose whatever they wanted to create their own monster. Everyone’s looked different, which gave them plenty to talk and write about. While they were creating their monsters, I played a little spooky music for some ambiance.
When they finished, they used this writing template to describe their monster. They wrote sentences such as, “My monster has six slimy feet,” or, “My monster has three green eyes.” This is such a cute idea for practicing adjectives in October. The craft gives students a reason to use descriptive words, and cutting and assembling the pieces gives them some fine motor skills practice, too. Plus it's just a lot of fun creating their own little monsters.
9. Read The Leaf Thief for Fall Learning
If you have students who don’t celebrate Halloween, or your school doesn’t allow Halloween activities, you can still enjoy seasonal learning. These last two ideas are great for fall.
The Leaf Thief is a cute book about a squirrel who thinks someone is stealing the leaves from the trees but he discovers that the wind is blowing them down as the season changes.
We used this book for a whole series of activities. For comprehension, we talked about story elements such as characters, setting, and plot. We also learned vocabulary words like thief, canopy, and woodpecker. Then we connected the story to science and learned why leaves change color. Here in Ohio, we could go outside and gather leaves for the kids to sort by shape and color.
Afterward, they made a little mini book about why leaves change color. It’s a great way to connect reading, science, and math using something kids can see happening outside their classroom.
10. Practice Writing How to Rake Leaves
Another great fall activity is to have kids explain the steps for how to rake leaves. Talk through the process together before asking them to write. What do you do first? What happens next? How do you finish?
I used differentiated writing templates because the kids were learning to write with temporal words like first, next, then, and last. When they finished their writing, they made a cute leaf raking craft to go with it.
Turn October Excitement Into Learning
So there you have it – 10 fun ways to turn that Halloween excitement into classroom learning. You don’t have to try all 10 Halloween classroom ideas. Choose one that fits what you’re teaching, gather your materials, and give it a try.
Click here to see all of my Halloween activities and find something fun for your classroom!
Looking for more ideas? Click below to read how to make your classroom Halloween party a success this year!
Hi, I'm Molly, the creative mind behind Firstieland. With over 35 years of experience in early childhood education, I'm your primary support for resources that will save you time and make learning feel like play. Learn more about my mission for Firstieland here.
