October is here and teachers are hard at work looking for ways to keep learning fun. If you are looking for Halloween ideas for the classroom, this post has some great options!

Ghost Spelling

Grab your spelling list or phonics pattern for the week and get ready to have some fun! Ghost spelling will be your students new favorite way to practice words. Students write the words using a white crayon. Then the magic happens…the student uses a marker to color over top of the white words and the spelling words appear. The kids honestly think this is the coolest thing they've ever seen.

Spooky the Ghost

Students find Spooky the Ghost hidden around the classroom each day in October. But, they have to be quiet as a ghost about it. If you've got a talkative class, this activity works like a charm!

Spooky Music

This simple, yet fun idea will bring some neat vibes to your classroom. I love to play spooky music from Pandora by searching for “Kids Halloween Songs”. You can do this with Spotify, Apple Music, or any other music platform you like. For some added fun we will dim the lights a bit. Pro teacher tip: tell your students that the music will continue to play if they are working hard and not talking. You will have a hard-working, silent classroom!

👻 Check out our Halloween Party Playlist 🎃

Q-Tip Skeletons

Q-Tip skeletons are a simple craft that your students can do to spice up a writing project or simply just as an art project. The teacher can provide a model for students to follow or allow students to use their creativity and make their own without a model.

Fact Family Haunted Houses

Fact Family Haunted Houses are another fun project to do with your class in the month of October. Combining an art project with math skills can make for a really great activity that will be sure to have your students enjoying themselves.

1. Provide your students with the fact family haunted house template.
2. Students use paper scraps to create windows that fold in to hide the ghost
3. Students use white paper to create ghosts for behind the windows
4. Assign each student three numbers that belong to a fact family
5. Students make the two addition and two subtraction sentences to complete the fact family
6. Then students will bring up their fact family to be checked before writing it on the top of their haunted house

Learn About Bats and Spiders

Students love to learn about gross, creepy, crawly things so I like to save our bats and spiders unit for October! We can wrap in lessons about nonfiction text features, asking and answer questions, main idea and key details, informational writing, compare and contrast, and more!

There are tons of books and videos out there to learn about bats and spiders. Some of our favorite videos are this spiders video and bats video. We use the information learned from these in our bats and spiders unit seen below.

Ghost Goop

Slime, although messy, can be a really fun activity to do in the classroom as well. Disclaimer: lay down a plastic tablecloth in the area the students are creating slime. I like to use plastic medical trays that the local hospital donated to me as their workspace. The edges of these plastic trays were perfect for keeping everything contained in one area. Recipe listed below.

I hope these ideas help you bring some fun into your classroom this October! Use the image below to save these ideas to your Pinterest board.

Halloween Math Activities

Get your students excited about math with these hands-on center activities! There are a variety of different skills and they are provided in both digital and printable formats. Did I mention we have recording sheets and answer keys included for accountability?

Candy Corn Task Cards

Allow your students to practice standard form, expanded form, and word form in a sweet way. Try these Candy Corn Place Value Task Cards with a recording sheet.  It’s perfect for the Halloween holiday!

Witches Brew Digital Math Game

Try this digital game to keep your students engaged and learning math in a spookily fun way!

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