Halloween is full of things kids find interesting: pumpkins, costumes, candy, bats, spiders and, of course, ghosts. That makes it easy to bring a little Halloween fun into everyday reading, writing and math practice.
Here are some simple Halloween learning activities to try at home, including some of our Halloween worksheets.
Start with Halloween words
Make a list of Halloween words together. Younger children might come up with words such as bat, cat, web, hat and boo, while older children can try pumpkin, ghost, costume, skeleton, vampire and haunted.
Once you have a list, there are lots of ways to use it.
Write each word on a small piece of paper and put the words in a bowl. Pick one at a time and ask your child to spell it. Or write words with missing letters for your child to complete:
p _ m p k _ n
s p _ d _ r
g h _ s t
Our Halloween spelling worksheets give children more practice with activities such as choosing the correctly spelled word and filling in missing letters.
You could also turn the words into a memory game. Make two cards for each word, turn them face down and take turns finding matching pairs. Each time your child finds a pair, have them read and spell the word.
Go on a Halloween word hunt
Instead of sitting at the table for the next activity, send your child on a word hunt.
Hide Halloween word cards around the room or house. Each time your child finds one, they have to read it aloud. Older children can spell the word without looking at the card or use it in a sentence.
Another kind of word hunt is a Halloween word search. Children have to pay close attention to the letters and their order as they look for each hidden word.
When the word search is finished, cover the list of words and see how many your child can remember and spell.
Add some Halloween math
Halloween candy makes an easy math manipulative.
Give your child a small collection of candy and ask them to sort it by type. How many are in each group? Which group has the most? Which has the fewest? How many pieces are there altogether?
Older children can turn the same candy into multiplication or division questions. If 24 pieces of candy are shared equally among four children, how many does each child get?
Pumpkins work too. Estimate how much a pumpkin weighs, measure around its widest part or count its ribs. If you have several pumpkins, put them in order from lightest to heaviest or shortest to tallest.
For some pencil-and-paper practice, choose one of our Halloween-themed math activities from the Halloween worksheets collection.
A short worksheet followed by some hands-on Halloween math gives children two different ways to practice the same kinds of skills.
Read something a little spooky
Pick a Halloween story from the library or read a short Halloween passage together.
Before reading, look at the title and pictures and ask your child what they think will happen. Afterwards, ask a few simple questions: Who was the story about? Where did it happen? What happened first? Was the ending what they expected?
Solve a maze, then make your own
A maze can be a nice change after reading or math practice.
Our Halloween worksheets include Halloween mazes for children to work through.
Before your child starts drawing, encourage them to look ahead and work out part of the route with their eyes.
Then turn the activity around: have your child draw a simple Halloween maze of their own. Maybe a ghost has to reach a haunted house, or a spider needs to find its web.
When the maze is finished, give it to someone else in the family to solve.
Play with Halloween vocabulary
Halloween introduces children to some interesting vocabulary.
What does haunted mean? What's the difference between a costume and ordinary clothes? What is a skeleton? What does a spider use a web for?
Our Halloween vocabulary worksheets let children work with seasonal words through activities such as matching and word scrambles.
You can keep going without a worksheet. Pick three Halloween words and challenge your child to use all three in one silly sentence.
For ghost, pumpkin and bed, they might write:
The ghost put a pumpkin under my bed.
The sillier the sentence, the better.
Color, talk and write
Coloring can provide a quiet break between more structured activities.
Let your child choose one of our Halloween coloring pages from the Halloween worksheets collection.
For younger children, simply talk about the picture while they color. What can they see? What colors are they using? How many pumpkins, bats or ghosts can they find?
For older children, use the finished picture as a writing prompt. Ask them to write a sentence, a few sentences or even a short story about what is happening in the scene.
Finish with a Halloween story challenge
Choose five Halloween words, such as:
pumpkin – ghost – night – door – candy
Now challenge your child to write a story that uses all five.
Children who aren't ready to write a whole story can tell one aloud while you write it down for them. Or take turns adding one sentence at a time.
For an extra challenge, add a surprise word that doesn't seem to belong in a Halloween story, such as banana, toothbrush or penguin. Your child has to find a way to work it into the story.
More Halloween learning fun
Halloween learning doesn't have to mean doing lots of worksheets. A spelling activity, a little candy math, a story, a maze or some coloring can all provide useful practice.
Mix hands-on activities with a few of our Halloween worksheets, where you'll find spelling, vocabulary, reading, math, word searches, mazes, tracing, coloring and more.
Choose a few worksheets that suit your child's age and interests and enjoy adding fun Halloween activities to learning this October.
