How to Celebrate Halloween in Your Classroom

I have been teaching kindergarten since 1995 and have found Halloween to be the kids' favorite holiday of the year. Some teachers will spend a lot of time celebrating St. Patrick's Day and Valentine's Day, but it's Halloween that the kids love most. I have created a great thematic unit. Follow these simple steps to give your students a Halloween they will never forget.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Fog machine
• Not-so-scary decorations
• Halloween sound effects CD

1. Black out the windows.

   Black out the windows if possible using black butcher paper. Make the room as dark as possible. Remember, your eyes adjust to darkness, so the room will seem really dark when you enter and then hardly dark in a few minutes.

2. Fog machine!

   Buy a fog machine and shoot the fog out from under the door before you let the kids in the classroom; this will really excite them! Once they are in the room shoot the fog every 10 or 15 minutes. Don't worry; it won't set off the smoke alarm.

3. 

   Have a pumpkin carving contest with your big buddies. You probably don't want your young students carving pumpkins (even with safe pumpkin-carving knives).

4. 

   Give the kids flashlights and do "flashlight reading" with them. Pointing a flashlight at a book and tracking the words is a fun and effective reading exercise.

5. 

   Play some Halloween games like Halloween Bingo. Instead of numbers, Halloween Bingo features Halloween favorites such as witches, goblins and ghosts.

6. Play a Halloween sound effects CD. Play it during the day and check it out beforehand to make sure it's not too scary (chainsaws, screaming and so forth). These CDs are readily available throughout October.

Tips & Warnings

• See Resources below for a link to The Halloween Unit on my website: Rock and Roll Kindergarten.

• If there are any questionable decorations or sound effects, try them out with the lights on before the kids see them in the dark.

Resources

• The Halloween Unit