Halloween in the Classroom

Halloween is often the first party of the school year, and after a busy back to school season, it can be challenging to plan out! I thought I would share a few of my favorite Halloween read alouds, activities, and some tips and tricks that I have used to make this crazy day a little less taxing!

This post also contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.

Halloween Party

Choose Your Snacks And Drinks

Many schools have health and wellness policies that spell out the types of snacks and drinks that you can serve.  Often schools require that treats be store-bought or pre-packaged as well.  Make sure you check these requirements before requesting items from parents.

Invites

I like to send a note home to my parents a week or two before Halloween to let them know how we will be celebrating.  You can grab this Halloween Party letter to parents freebie by clicking here.

Make sure to ask for parent volunteers as well.  Determine how many activities you will have, and request a parent volunteer for each activity.  You might also want to include a volunteer (or two) that focus on delivering and cleaning up food items.

Music Maestro

What's a party without music?  I love using Kidz Bop in the classroom because I don't have to worry about inappropriate lyrics playing when I least expect it.  Halloween is crazy enough without having to deal with parent calls after school!

Kidz Bop Halloween Hits is perfect for Halloween, and best of all, you can stream it for FREE if you are an Amazon Prime member.



Language Arts

Halloween Word Search Printables

Print out this fun Halloween Word Search puzzle and get your students ready for everyone's favorite spooky holiday!

Math

Halloween Color By Number Math Facts Practice

Color-by-number activities are ALWAYS a hit in my classroom, and Halloween is no exception!  I love being able to get a little math fact practice in with my students with these color-by-code sheets.

Halloween Color By Number Addition Math Facts

Halloween Color By Number Multiplication Math Facts

FREEBIES - Download the previews of these resources for a free color-by-number worksheet!

Ghost Math Facts Craftivity

And in keeping with the math fact theme, another great activity that can be used to celebrate Halloween in the classroom are these adorable math fact ghosts!

Ghost Addition Facts I Know Craftivity

Ghost Multiplication Facts I Know Craftivity

Eye Ball Math

You can make another great Halloween-themed math game with these spooky eyeballs from Dollar Tree. (If you can't find them, Amazon has a set of these eyeballs as well). Simply write numbers onto the eyeballs using a sharpie.  You can practice skills such as:

• math facts
• double digit multiplication, subtraction, or addition
• long division
• rounding

While you are at Dollar Tree, grab a bag of candy corn to practice comparing numbers.

Reading

Halloween Read Alouds

One of the best things about Halloween is that there are so many great read-alouds centered around it.  I buy most of my Halloween-themed books from Amazon - being a Prime member makes it so much easier since they arrive quickly even when I buy one at the last moment.  I have also purchased from Scholastic and Barnes and Noble (which always has great holiday displays in their children's section).


I shared a list of my favorite Halloween read-alouds in this blog post.

Halloween Mad Libs

I love using Mad Libs in the classroom, and Halloween is no exception! There are quite a few options:

Miscellaneous Ideas

Make ANY assignment more festive by printing on Halloween orange paper.

What things do you do to celebrate Halloween in your classroom?

 I would love to hear from you! ❤️

Have a question? Idea for a resource you might find helpful?

Be so kind and leave a comment below.

Halloween Read Alouds

My students LOVE Halloween and I LOVE reading aloud to them, so here are a few of my favorite Halloween read alouds that are perfect for upper elementary students!

This post contains affiliate links. I earn a small commission each time someone makes a purchase using one of my links, which helps to support the blog.  All opinions are my own and I only promote brands and products that I have used myself and truly love.  

The Ugly Pumpkin

This is a Halloween/Thanksgiving twist on the classic fairy tale The Ugly Duckling. The Ugly Pumpkin waits all season long for someone to take him home for Halloween, but no one will. He doesn't look like the other pumpkins, so he sets off in search for a place where he will fit in.  Sure enough, he finds exactly where he belongs - BUT, it's not at all what he expected!

Teaching Ideas:

Themes: Loving yourself, fitting in

Grammar: 

Adjectives - this book is filled with great adjectives for your students to find including: ugly, bright, crispy, late, cruel, overrun, odd, and happy.

Adverbs - your students can find a plethora of adverbs including: plainly, early, when, alone, awhile, then, and finally.

Verbs - See if you can challenge your students to write some sentences using the verbs in the story: waiting, picked, looking, getting, tricked, laughed, rolled, and happened.

Writing: This book is an adaptation of a fairy tale, see if your students can write their own adaptation of The Ugly Ducking or the fairy tale of their choice.

Pumpkin Jack

If you are a Kindle Unlimited Member, you can get the Kindle version of this book for FREE here!

Tim carves a pumpkin that is fierce and funny.  A pumpkin like that deserves a name, and so he gives him one - Jack. Tim loves Jack so much that he keeps him "Long after the best trick-or-treat candy was eaten".  He keeps Jack until it begins to rot and Mom tells Tim to throw it out.  He takes it into the garden instead, and that is where the magic begins! He watches it throughout the year as it undergoes many changes until becoming his Jack'O'Lantern again. 

Teaching Ideas:

Themes: Loyalty, friendship

Grammar: 

Adjectives - fierce, first, funny, perfect, good, best, warm, magic, different, wrinkled, silly, bright, orange, brown, colder, flatter, cold, heavy, faded, crumpled, distant, thin, warm, hot, green, hidden, tired, new, tattered, pale, limp, wet, withered, unripe, bright, and generous.

Figurative Language - There are many examples of figurative language throughout the book:

"...the brown ghosts of last summer's plants"

"Flowers opened on the plant each morning, yellow stars that twisted shut forever in the afternoon."

"...searching for green pumpkins like hidden treasures."

"... the pumpkin plant seemed tired."

"The frozen plants seemed changed to pale blue glass."

Science: This book has a great science tie-in with the life cycle of a pumpkin.

Bone Soup

This fun little tale is a Halloween adaptation of the classic Stone Soup. Finnigin is infamous for his ravenous appetite.  Every where he goes he carries his eating stool, his eating spoon, and of course his gigantic eating mouth.  

When he happens upon a new town, all of the creatures there have been warned about his ravenous hunger, and they lock up all of their food.  Finnigin stirs up some delicious Bone Soup and tricks them all into sharing with him.

Teaching Ideas:

Themes: sharing

Vocabulary:  There are so many great vocabulary words in this book including: wits, ravenous, barren, impending, plague, locusts, panic, spare, cauldron, ceremoniously, splintered, ghoul, delicacy, stammered, fetched, stash, wistful, and longingly.

Punctuation: Many of the sentences include commas and quotation marks.  You might give students samples of these sentences without the punctuation and ask them to correct them.  You could also ask them to find the sentences and generate some punctuation rules for them.

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich

If you are a Kindle Unlimited Member, you can get the Kindle version of this book for FREE here!

This book of poems is filled with monster size problems!  Frankenstein's cupboards are bare. The Creature from the Black Lagoon doesn't wait an hour before swimming and goes into the bog too soon.  The Phantom of the Opera has a song stuck in his head.  The witches have watchers. And, don't even get started on Dracula's hygiene issues!

If your students are fans of Shel Silverstein poetry, they will love these ones!

Teaching Ideas:

Writing: Have your students write their own Halloween poems.

Figurative Language - Can your students find the figurative language throuout the book?

Onomatopoeia

" Cack cack-a-doodle-a DOOOOOOOOO!"

Alliteration

" Fancy folk avoid his feet"

"the personality of plaid"

At the Old Haunted House

If you are a Kindle Unlimited Member, you can get the Kindle version of this book for FREE here!

The rhyming text of this book makes it so fun to read!  At the old haunted house there are all kinds of creatures: a big ma monster and her wee monsters two, a scrawny black cat and her wee kittens three, a green pa goblin and his wee goblins four, and even more!

Writing: Have you

Teaching Ideas:

Writing: This would make such a great mentor text for writing all sorts of things.  Have your students use the same model to write a story book, or to teach about a non-fiction topic.

What are your favorite Halloween Books to Read Aloud?  Share with us in the comments!

Weekly Teacher Deals October 14, 2019

I will be posting all of the amazing Amazon deals I find each week in this post so you can easily find them!  You can also find an updated list on Facebook here.

If you grab a deal, let me KNOW in the comment section below to let me know that the deals are still good. And... don't forget to share with your other teacher friends so they can grab the deals as well!

1. Laminator Sheets

I love laminating just about everything and anything in my classroom!  Having a personal laminator both in my classroom and my home makes it so easy!  I try to stock up on laminating sheets whenever they go on sale!

2. Flair Pens 

What teacher doesn't love Flair pens?  And... it is even better when they are on sale!

3. Colored Mechanical Pencils

These mechanical pencils actually have COLORED lead!  I love using them to color code my planner!

4. Velcro Dots

Velcro dots are amazing for making math centers, file folder games, and so much more!  Grab them while they are on sale!


5.  Pretzels

This canister of mini-pretzels is perfect for keeping on hand in the classroom for extra snacks for yourself or your students!

6. Repositionable Tabs

I love using these tabs to mark places in professional development books that I want to refer to!

7. Mini-Jenga Games

These Mini-Jenga games are perfect for playing Jenga in the classroom.  At just under $4 you can grab enough for your whole class without breaking the bank!

If you are looking for even more deals, check out this post.

And.... don't forget to enter our latest giveaway!

 I would love to hear from you! ❤️

Have a question? Idea for a resource you might find helpful?

Be so kind and leave a comment below.

Weekly $25 Teachers pay Teachers Gift Card Giveaway October 14, 2019

Teacher Giveaway!

This Giveaway is Over!  Please visit our Giveaway page to enter our current giveaway.

$25 Teachers pay Teachers Gift Card Giveaway

Every week one lucky teacher gets to go on a Teachers pay Teachers shopping spree!  Will it be you this week?

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:  

Prize: $25 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card 

Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter.  Giveaway ends 10/21/19 and is open worldwide.  

Are you a Teacher Blogger or Teachers pay Teachers seller who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your store and social media?  Click here to find out how you can join our totally awesome group of bloggers! 

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Weekly $25 Teachers pay Teachers Gift Card Giveaway October 7, 2019

Teacher Giveaway!

This Giveaway is Over!  Please visit our Giveaway page to enter our current giveaway.

$25 Teachers pay Teachers Gift Card Giveaway

Every week one lucky teacher gets to go on a Teachers pay Teachers shopping spree!  Will it be you this week?

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:  

Prize: $25 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card 

Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter.  Giveaway ends 10/14/19 and is open worldwide.  

Are you a Teacher Blogger or Teachers pay Teachers seller who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your store and social media?  Click here to find out how you can join our totally awesome group of bloggers! 

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Monthly $100 Teachers pay Teachers Gift Card Giveaway - October 2019

Every month we spoil one lucky teacher gets to go on a Teachers pay Teachers shopping spree!  Will it be you this month?

Teacher Giveaway!

This Giveaway is Over!  Please visit our Giveaway page to enter our current giveaway.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:  

Prize: $100 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card

Giveaway Organized by: Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the Teacher)

Co-hosts:   An Apple for the Teacher, The Monkey Market, Believe to Achieve by Anne Rozell, Pint Size Learners, The Fun Factory, A Plus Kids, TheBeezyTeacher, Mrs Wenning's Classroom, It's Kinder Time, Love Luck and Laughter, Kamp Kindergarten, Priscilla Woodard - Tasked 2 Teach, and Kelly McCown.

Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter.  Giveaway ends 10/13/19 and is open worldwide.

Are you a Teacher Blogger or Teachers pay Teachers seller who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your store and social media?  Click here to find out how you can join our totally awesome group of bloggers! 

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