Classroom Halloween Activities
Halloween is a holiday that many children have excitement and anticipation for, and capitalizing on this enthusiasm can breathe new life into your classroom lessons. Incorporate a Halloween theme into your lesson plans and arts-and-crafts activities to keep students engaged in the lesson and excited about the end results. Does this Spark an idea?
Other People Are Reading
-
Pumpkins and Math Class
-
Utilize a pumpkin as a subject for a variety of math problems. Pass the pumpkin around the classroom and ask each student to estimate how much they think the pumpkin weighs. Once everyone has had a turn, weigh the pumpkin and distribute a prize to the person who was closest. Pass the pumpkin around again, this time asking the students to estimate the circumference of the pumpkin's widest point. Measure the pumpkin and distribute another prize to the closest estimate. Finish out the lesson by cutting the top off the pumpkin and passing it around so the students can look at the seeds on the inside. Ask each student to guess how many seeds are in the pumpkin. Distribute a handful of seeds to each student to count until the pumpkin is empty. The closest guess wins a prize. Take the seeds home and roast them for an in-class treat the next day.
Pumpkin Candle
-
Pass out baby food jars, orange tissue paper, black construction paper, a tea light candle, a 50/50 glue-and-water mixture as well as a paintbrush to each student. Instruct the students to tear the tissue paper into small pieces, roughly an inch in size. Tell the students to paint the outside of the baby food jar, except for the lip of the jar. Apply the tissue paper pieces until the jar is covered, excluding the lip of the jar, as this is a fire hazard. Instruct the students to cut out jack-o-lantern eyes, a nose and a mouth out of the construction paper and glue these on as well. Place the candle inside the jar once the craft is complete, reminding the students that the candle should only be lit under an adult's supervision. The candle can then be placed inside a jack-o-lantern or on a table or counter as a stand-alone decoration.
-
Halloween Poetry
-
Instruct the students to compose silly epitaphs to introduce poetry writing in a fun and entertaining way. Since epitaphs are two-line, rhyming poems, typically written on gravestones to relay how the person died, instruct the students to choose unrealistic ways in which their subject reached an untimely end. For example, "Here lies Dean, he watched too much TV and was sucked through the screen." Copy the epitaphs onto gray construction-paper tombstones and display them around the classroom for Halloween.
Ghosts
-
Distribute a square of cheesecloth to each student that is a 14-inch-by-14-inch square, along with a small gourd, a toilet-paper tube and a tin tray with a glue-and-water mixture covering the bottom. Instruct the students to soak the cheesecloth in the glue mixture until it is completely covered by the glue. Stand the toilet-paper tube upright and place the gourd into the top of it. Lay the glue-soaked cheesecloth over the gourd so that the center of the cheesecloth is centered over the gourd. Let the project dry overnight. The next day, squeeze the gourd out from inside the cheesecloth. The dried cheesecloth should hold the shape of the gourd even when it is removed, making it resemble a ghost. Glue googly eyes to the front of the ghosts and hang them around the classroom as decorations.
-
References
- Photo Credit Pumpkin image by Elizabeth Jasmine from Fotolia.com
