A chill is in the air, costumes are filling the stores, and Halloween is right around the corner. That means spooky season is upon us! Celebrate the season with these fun and creative Halloween activities and games. You’ll find party games perfect for a class Halloween celebration as well as more educational finds like writing prompts and STEM and math challenges. There are enough Halloween activities on this list to do something different every day in October and then some!
FEATURED PICK
1. Swap sweets for spooky treats
Make your classroom Halloween celebration hassle-free with ready-made favors that skip the sugar. Budget-friendly goodies like glow critters, Pop-Its, and squishies come prepackaged with cute Halloween messages to save you time. Plus they double as entertainment for your students!
Looking for quick and easy Halloween activities? Check out our roundup of terrific educational Halloween videos. Get some math practice, learn about Halloween around the world, or try some spooky yoga.
Poetry is a great topic to weave into Halloween celebrations. Try “My Next Door Neighbor Is a Witch,” “I Wouldn’t Live in a Haunted House,” and many more.
There are so many spooky situations that could easily be turned into a math word problem! From trick-or-treating to ghosts and goblins, check out the fun collection below.
Gather your brooms and a few small pumpkins, break the class into teams, then watch them race to see who can push the pumpkin across the finish line first!
Halloween activities can be a fun way to get kids moving. Grab some rolls of toilet paper, select teams, and then watch the hilarity ensue as the kids race to wrap up their friend like a mummy before the other team does!
Make your own spider magnets for only a few bucks by gluing small magnets to the back of plastic spiders from the dollar store. Then, use them for Halloween math activities, arrange them to spell letters or words, or just decorate your classroom with them.
Study Pablo Picasso and cubism, then use jack-o’-lanterns to practice a little cubism of your own. Encourage students to get creative as they mix up shapes and faces.
Keep little learners busy by taping a large paper ghost with an open mouth to a doorway. Have kids feed letter magnets through the mouth as you call them out. This works with numbers and sight words too.
16. Build STEM structures with toothpicks and pumpkin candies
STEM building challenges make great Halloween activities. Give this classic example a Halloween twist by using gummy pumpkins in place of marshmallows. And for more, download our free STEM challenge cards.
Early readers and spellers can get some practice at initial letter sounds with this cute idea. Label Halloween-themed boxes with letters, and fill a plastic cauldron with small toys or mini erasers. Then, have students sort the items into the correct boxes by their initial sounds.
Some Halloween activities, like this one, work on gross motor skills. Use some painter’s tape to create a spiderweb on the floor, then spread spiders or ghosts all around. Finally, let students try their hand at collecting them without losing their footing.
This easy Halloween craft will give kids some fine motor skill practice. You can also have them count the beads as they string them. When you’re done, they’ll have a cute little pumpkin to decorate their room for fall!
What is your favorite Halloween costume and why? Would you spend a night in a graveyard for $100? Why or why not? We have 18 more Halloween writing prompt ideas plus free printable writing paper for you to use!
So simple and yet so fun. Go on a nature hunt with your students and have them collect as many flat rocks as they can. Then let them bring their jack-o’-lanterns to life with some orange and black paint. Be sure to use non-washable paint if you plan on displaying them outside!
Fill solo cups with cute Halloween-themed prizes, cover them with orange tissue paper, and then hang them on a poster. Kids will love poking through a pumpkin to reveal their prize when it is their turn.
If you’re looking for some not-so-spooky stories, try our roundup of pumpkin books. For kids who love to be scared, check out some of the (slightly) terrifying tales below instead.
Every kid loves the standard baking-soda-and-lemon-juice volcano. So why not add some Halloween flair by doing the experiment in a pumpkin?! Also, check out our 20 Favorite Halloween Experiments.
How amazing would these look in your classroom or flickering away in the background of your Zoom screen? And they’re easy to make with our free printable templates.
Fill a tub or sand table with sand and some creepy, crawly Halloween items, then blindfold your students and have them race to see who can find the witch’s finger first!
Save and clean your hollowed-out eggshells, then fill them with cornstarch to create vanishing ghosts! Experiment with dropping or throwing them from different angles and heights to see what sorts of patterns you can create.
The best Halloween activities involve simple supplies and simple setup. Stick a drinking straw into a ball of play dough, then roll the dice and add that number of spider rings to your stack. The first to fill up their spider tower wins!
Pick up a few bags of candy corn and grab our free printables, then engage your students in meaningful Halloween math activities, from matching to multiplication.
Fill a zipper baggie with hair gel and a few drops of orange food coloring, then knead to mix. Add pumpkin seeds or googly eyes, then lay it flat for kids to practice tracing letters or numbers.
So simple and so cute! Simply cut egg cartons into three cup sections and have kids paint them black. When the paint is dry, add googly eyes and a pipe cleaner and they’re ready to swoop.
Activities using wood craft sticks are inexpensive and lots of fun. Tape sticks together, then turn them over and stencil or draw a Halloween design on the front. Remove the tape and shuffle up the sticks, then reassemble your DIY puzzles.
Take and print photos of all of your students before getting started with this craft/anatomy lesson. Have students cut up different-size cotton swabs and then glue them to form the skeleton.
This is bound to become one of your favorite Halloween activities. Draw faces on disposable cups to turn them into ghosts. Then challenge kids to stack and unstack them quickly, build the highest tower, and more.
Learning how to add and subtract decimals is fun when candy is involved! Get the free printable task cards at the link, then use Halloween candy ads for a comparison shop of the best candy prices in town.
This is the perfect STEM activity for Halloween. Gather some large Popsicle sticks, rubber bands, bottle caps, and candy corn pumpkins, and get ready to see who can shoot their pumpkin the farthest!
Ten-frames are excellent learning tools for early math students. We love these free printable spiderwebs, which add a spooky seasonal twist to the learning.
Pucker up and blow some strange and eerie ghosts using straws and white paint. Add googly eyes and a mouth with a black marker to give them each their own personality.
Nothing says Halloween like a skeleton. Teach your students how our joints, muscles, and tendons work together to move our hands using just construction paper, plastic straws, string, and tape.
Grab some sturdy cardboard, washable paint, and painter’s tape, then let your little artists go to work. Ripping off the tape to reveal the masterpiece will be oh-so satisfying for your little ones.
Label mini pumpkin bowls with numbers, and write equations on wood craft sticks. Kids calculate the sums and place the sticks into the correct pumpkin.
Play dough is the perfect sensory activity for little learners, so why not put a fun Halloween-themed spin on it? Make some homemade play dough or buy some pre-made if you are short on time, then have students cut shapes from it with Halloween cookie cutters.
Stuff empty plastic bottles with cotton balls to turn them into ghost bowling pins, then have fun knocking them down. You can even turn this into a math activity by having kids tally or graph the number of pins they knock down on each turn.
If you’re looking for Halloween activities that help kids practice math facts, check this out. How many different ways can kids make equivalent equations? They’ll need at least eight for this silly spider craft.
Create a broomstick from cut-up yellow construction paper and a brown pipe cleaner, then let students personalize them by stringing beads of their choosing onto it.
All you’ll need to create this adorable headband is some black construction paper, glue or a stapler, and some googly eyes. Your students will have fun personalizing them and then showing them off.
Practice following directions to draw a Frankenstein monster, and then add watercolor paints to perfect the look. Pair with the book Crankenstein by Samantha Berger for an entire Franken-lesson.
Collect toilet paper rolls for students to use to make adorable monsters. Pair them with the read-aloud Alfred’s Book of Monsters by Sam Streed or Monster Boogie by Laurie Berkner.
Laminate monster face cards and have students roll the dice to create and solve addition problems by adding candy corn to the monster’s mouth. That’s the best way to use candy corn (in our opinion).
Print out and laminate word family cards and attach each to a mini cauldron. Then, students sort words by word family while mixing up a witch’s brew. So spooky cute!
Let kids experiment with this baking soda and vinegar experiment variation. Cover large plastic eyeballs in baking soda, then let it sit overnight. The next day, put the eyeballs in different-colored vinegar and watch for the reaction.
Spend a week writing about a haunted house. Start with a vocabulary list of spooky and scary words to describe a haunted house. Then, have students brainstorm what they would include in their own haunted house. Finally, have students write a story that occurs in a haunted house.
Looking for Halloween activities for art class? Teach about Van Gogh’s Starry Night, but change a few key details and turn the painting into “Scary Night.” Let students add their own take on this painting to see what else they can weave into this painting idea.
Tie string over a bin, drop spider rings in, and give students a pair of tongs to rescue the spiders from below the web. A great fine motor and focus activity.
Turn paint chips into monster, pumpkin, and ghost puzzles. Then, put the puzzles into a center for students to complete or send sets home with students to work on at home.
Read The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano and study volume by making and working with cubes. It’s a great way to give kids hands-on experience working with volume.
A zentangle is a structured pattern, called a tangle, created on square tiles in black and white. The patterns can be made with dots, lines, curves, or any other line you can think of. A black cat is perfect to fill with tangles.
