Easy Halloween Activities for October in the Classroom

Halloween Activities

Halloween in the classroom is always exciting—and sometimes a little crazy! Finding the right Halloween activities can help, especially when students are thinking about everything but what they are supposed to be thinking about. Costume choices, favorite candies, and family plans for the big night are often at the top of their minds.

I have always had to be extra creative to harness that energy and use it for as much learning as possible. And that means creating and using Halloween-themed activities that teach the concepts we are already working on while still keeping some of the excitement of the holiday. As a result, I have quite an extensive collection of Halloween activities related to the math, writing, and phonics skills we are working on throughout the month of October!

As any good teacher would do, I don’t want to keep them all to myself! I want to share them with you to make your Halloween season not only more fun, but also more productive. I also recognize that sometimes there is a need for some just plain fun, so I’ve included a few of those activities as well!

Halloween Math Games

When Halloween excitement starts taking over the classroom, sometimes a game is exactly what you need! These Halloween math games keep students practicing important skills while giving them a chance to play, work with a partner, and have a little Halloween fun.

Jack-o-Lantern Glyph and Data Interpretation

Glyphs are so much fun—teachers love them and students love them even more! And they combine so many different skills into one activity. Students have to read and follow directions, make choices based on their answers, and then use those choices to create something that is uniquely theirs.

For this Halloween glyph, students answer questions about themselves and use their answers to create their own jack-o-lantern. Once the jack-o-lanterns are finished, the real math begins! Teachers can use the included questions to help students interpret the glyphs, compare answers, and look for similarities and differences among their classmates.

And as an added bonus, all those unique jack-o-lanterns make a fantastic Halloween classroom display when you’re finished!

💚 Grab the Jack-o-Lantern Glyph and give it a try with your students this Halloween!

Candy Corn Math Activities

Candy corn is the quintessential Halloween treat. I used to hate it as a kid and was blown away by the fact that my mom could down a bag in one sitting! But now, as an adult, I find myself sneaking a bag into my shopping cart as soon as they hit the stores.

I think the attraction is not only the taste, but also the colors and the feelings it evokes. That said, using candy corn as a learning tool fits perfectly in the classroom around Halloween.

I use a candy corn theme to practice addition and subtraction, build number bonds, practice number patterns and ordinal numbers, and work with number recognition and number words. There are so many different math skills you can practice with those three little stripes of orange, yellow, and white!

💚 Grab the Candy Corn Math Activities and bring a little candy corn into your math lesson!

Number Bonds and Turn Around Facts

October is the time to talk about turn around facts and number bonds, which makes them great Halloween math topics. Kids love using Halloween symbols to help them work on both concepts. It’s fun to think: If there are 10 Halloween figures and 6 of them are ghosts, how many are spiders? Or, 6 pumpkins plus 3 pieces of candy corn is the same as 3 pieces of candy corn plus 6 pumpkins!

For number bonds, students can work on composing and decomposing numbers with Halloween pictures, practice pages, and a card game. And if you’re working on addition facts, Halloween-themed turn around facts are an easy way to practice the idea that the order of the addends can change while the sum stays the same.

These are both easy activities to pull out during October when students are just learning the concepts or need a little extra practice or review.

💚 Grab the Halloween Number Bonds Activities here!
💚 Grab the Halloween Number Bond Coloring Pages here!
💚 Grab the Halloween Turn Around Facts Practice Pages here!

Halloween Math Games

Roll a Jack-o-Lantern

Dice games are super fun and super easy. Basically, all you have to do is grab some dice and play!

In this game, students roll two dice, add the numbers together, and use the sum to determine which part they get to add to their jack-o-lantern. They keep rolling, adding, and drawing to see how many jack-o-lanterns they can complete in an allotted amount of time. This game is such a simple and fun way to get in lots of addition fact practice while still feeling like Halloween fun.

💚 Grab the Roll a Jack-o-Lantern Addition Facts Dice Game here!

BOO! Higher Number Game

This is the simplest game in the world, but my students loved it so much that I ended up making it for a few different seasons! BOO! is played much like the traditional card game War. Students each turn over a card, compare the numbers, and the player with the higher number keeps both cards. But there is a Halloween twist—a BOO! card always wins!

This game is also super easy to differentiate. Choose the number cards that work best for your students, or switch things up and have the lower number win instead.

💚 Grab the BOO! Halloween Higher Number Game here!

Halloween Literacy Activities

Halloween gives us a whole new collection of words to read, sort, write, and play with! These Halloween literacy activities bring a little seasonal fun to the reading and word-work skills students are already practicing.

Halloween ABC Order

Alphabetical order is one of those skills that takes repeated practice, and Halloween fortunately gives us a whole new group of words to work with! Instead of the usual word lists, students can alphabetize words like ghost, pumpkin, witch, and spider.

Students work with the provided Halloween words and even come up with their own Halloween words to put in alphabetical order.

💚 Grab the Halloween ABC Order Activities here!

Halloween Syllables Activities

Students get lots of opportunities to play around with Halloween words and listen for the parts they hear. They can clap them out, sort them, solve riddles, and even think of Halloween words of their own. It’s an easy way to sneak some extra syllable practice into October!

💚 Grab the Halloween Syllables Activities here!

Candy Corn Sight Word Game

Remember my love/hate relationship with candy corn? Well, apparently I couldn’t leave it in the math section!

This time, candy corn makes its way into literacy with a sight word Bump game. Students read a sight word card, cover the matching word, and try to keep their opponent from taking it over. It’s a simple way to get in repeated sight word practice while playing a fun candy corn-themed game with a partner.

And since we already know how exciting candy corn suddenly becomes in October, it fits right in!

💚 Grab the Candy Corn Sight Word Bump Games here!

Pick a Prompt Halloween Writing

Choosing what to write about can be hard for some students. This activity gives students a choice of Halloween-themed prompts, so the pressure of deciding what to write about is eliminated.

💚 Grab the Pick a Prompt Halloween Writing Activity here!

Halloween Phonics Activities

Phonics practice doesn’t have to stop just because Halloween is around the corner! Halloween words and pictures are an easy way to give students some extra practice with the sounds and spelling patterns they’re already learning.

Halloween Consonant Digraphs

The digraphs sh, ch, th, and wh are common beginning-of-the-year skills to practice. Students can get some extra practice with these sounds using simple, print-and-go Halloween activity pages!

Students identify the digraph and color the Halloween picture accordingly. It’s an easy way to combine phonics practice with a little Halloween fun!

💚 Grab the Halloween Consonant Digraph Coloring Pages here!

Glued Sounds -AM and -AN

Glued sounds are hard! Hard to teach and hard to learn! The glued sounds -am and -an are also commonly introduced early in the school year, and lots of practice is needed.

Students work with both real and nonsense words with -am and -an as they read and identify these sounds. The Halloween-themed games and practice pages give students another way to practice -am and -an!

💚 Grab the Glued Sounds -AM and -AN Halloween Activities here!

Looking for More Halloween Writing Ideas?

I couldn’t possibly fit all of my Halloween activities into one post! If you’re looking specifically for writing ideas, I have a whole collection of Halloween writing activities for before and after Halloween. You’ll find creative writing, grammar, story writing, paragraph writing, and more—including a FREE writing activity!