How to Hold a Classroom Halloween Celebration

Halloween becomes more popular every year. Children like it for the candy and costumes, of course, and adults like it almost as much as the children! Halloween can be a tricky holiday to celebrate in the classroom, but with some advance planning and allowances for parental opinions, Halloween can successfully be celebrated by the teacher and the students.

Instructions

1. Get permission from your administrator to hold a Halloween celebration. Some schools do not celebrate Halloween due to the fact that many parents object to it. Other schools hold a school-wide celebration rather than holding celebrations in individual classrooms. If your administrator does not give you permission to hold a Halloween celebration, consider changing your focus and theme to a Harvest party or Fall Festival instead.

2. Send home a letter to the parents explaining the logistics of the celebration and asking for permission to hold the party. Many parents may be fearful that your celebration may include scary or gross items. Reassure them that your celebration will have an educational component, and will not involve anything scary or gory (consider banning any overtly scary or gory costumes, such as anything bloody or popular gory movie characters).

3. 

   Plan an educational component. Look at your curriculum lessons and make your party somewhat educational. Do you have a unit in science coming up that involves bones, bats, or other things that are vaguely "Halloween-ish"? If so, integrate them into your party. For example, a study on the human skeleton can culminate in the making of skeletons during the party, which can then be taken home and used to decorate for Halloween. If not, use the opportunity to teach a lesson on the history of the holiday, or examine how other cultures celebrate holidays similar to Halloween.

4. Involve the students in the decorating and planning of the celebration. Have them create Halloween decorations to hang from the ceiling or put on the door. Ask students to plan the menu for the party and use this as a way to do some creative writing. For example, instead of serving "sandwiches," ask the students to think of some "Halloween-ish" names for sandwiches instead, such as "spooky sliced ghost wedges" for white bread triangles. Have them write spooky stories and decorate a bulletin board with them for the parents to read during the party, or have students read the stories aloud to parents.

5. Plan the costumes. Allow the students to wear their own (within reason), or instead plan a "ghost bash" and have everyone dress up as ghosts. You can make ghost costumes during class time out of old sheets. Encourage the parents to dress up as well, and enjoy your Halloween celebration!

Tips & Warnings

• Consider carving pumpkins during or before the party, but make sure you have plenty of parent helpers, and of course, do not let any students handle a knife!

• To create a bit of down time during the party, plan to read some Halloween books aloud.

• Candles create great lighting, but are not good to use in a classroom. Skip the candles and stick with the overhead lights!