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7 Spooktacular Activities for the Elementary Classroom
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Seven Spooktacular Activities for the Elementary Classroom

by Peggy Reimers
written by Peggy Reimers

Autumn is my favorite season of the year. Why? My top reason– the heat of the Texas summer is behind us (hopefully). Coming in at a close second is decorating cookies with the TCEA staff and their families. It is such a delight to hunt for Halloween sprinkles and decorating supplies for this fun activity. Of course, the third reason I love fall is because I get to find and create activities for students and teachers!

Are you ready to get your spooky-ooky on? Carve out some time for fun in your classroom with these seven fa-boo-lous activities for 2021!

Difficult Dictionary Dress-Up Day

Photo provided by Donnie Piercey

Mr. Donnie Piercey is a teacher in Lexington, Kentucky. I love that he has his fifth-graders dress up around Halloween as a difficult dictionary word. Can you match the words below to students in the photo?

  • Incognito
  • Zegal
  • Disheveled
  • Memorandum
  • Fortuitous
  • Lethargic
  • Lackadaisical 
  • Brawny
  • Sagacious

Check out Donnie’’s Dictionary Day parent letter here for the details and some tips on how to put an educational twist on Halloween costumes. Also, you should follow him on Twitter! He’s the 2021 Kentucky Teacher of the Year and he is always tweeting good stuff. 

Halloween Adjective Challenge

Since last year’s Halloween Synonym Challenge was a success, this year I have added the Halloween Adjective Challenge. This Google Form has ten images. Your challenge is to read the three sentences and choose the sentence that has correct adjectives for each image. The challenge has been created as a Google Form quiz, so look for your score and answers after submitting. Try it out here.

Halloween Synonym Challenge

Last year, the Halloween Synonym Challenge was released. To be honest, I forgot I had even created this challenge. Imagine my surprise when I opened up the results spreadsheet while writing this blog and there were 1,000+ entries! One of the best things about teaching is that there’s always an opportunity to make things better. So I changed the original Halloween Synonym Challenge into two separate challenges because I thought a 20-synonym activity was a bit long for one sitting. 

The redesigned Synonym Challenge is housed in a Google Form that is set up as a quiz. So look for your score and answers after submitting. 

Easier Words  

More Challenging Vocabulary

Screenshot by author

Trick-or-Treat Scratch Game

If you are a Scratch user and want your students to code a Halloween Scratch game, I found just the activity for you. Find the how-to blog here. Maytal’s blog includes the lesson plan, an introduction video, and a four-step video series on creating the Scratch game. 

The Halloween Scratch Lesson videos include:

Step 1:  Drop One Candy!

Step 2:  Clone Those Candies!

Step 3:  Handle Those Clones!

Step 4:  Add Score!

This is a fantastic Scratch activity because it can be used to introduce the concept of variables while still keeping things simple. Use this link to request the Starter Project.

Digital Breakouts

Also, I have two digital breakouts for Halloween. Won’t you join the 4,678 students and teachers who have solved The Boo Breakout? And if you are up for more, check out The Trick or Treat Breakout. This breakout was just created last year, but it already has 600 finishers. Will you become one?

If you are new to digital breakouts, read more about them here.  The American Library Association has also written a comprehensive article explaining all the details of digital breakouts. The article also lists many places to find breakouts you can use throughout the year. 

And remember educators, if you need the answers to The Boo Breakout, The Trick or Treat Breakout, or others – email me at preimers@tcea.org. Please include your school information in the signature line.

Fun for Home

Teachers, if you are looking for a variety of ideas for your own little ones, Country Living has the 43 Best Halloween Activities that Are Wicked Fun: “To-dos for the whole family that are downright spooktacular.” From looking at these, I am definitely liking the creepy-crawly hairdo, and I think I am going to make myself the candy corn party hat. The “DIY Your Kids’ Halloween costumes” are a must to scroll through. So creative!

More Ways to Get Your Pumpkin On!

If you are looking for more ideas, check out these previous blog posts packed with plenty of pumpkiny goodness:

Go out there and be the ghosties with the mosties. Eat, drink, and be scary!  And just make sure you have a happy and safe Halloween. 

Featured image: Designed by TCEA staff.

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breakouts
Web 2.0 Tool

Spooky Breakouts and Games

by Peggy Reimers
written by Peggy Reimers

Some educators dread Halloween. The consequences of a late night mixed with a sugar crash make for quite a day in the classroom. You just never know what you’re going to walk into that day!

But I know from personal experience, we as educators will make the best of any situation. So dust off the cobwebs, break out the candy corn and let’s get our BOO on with some activities and breakouts for you and your students. Most can be played in your classroom with social distancing or adapted virtually. And teachers, if your own Halloween party is going virtual, many of these will work for family and adult fun.

Digital Breakouts

Tricker or Treat Header with Are you dreaming about your full trick or treat bag with all the goodies? You have 45 minutes, to solve the Trick or Treat Breakout and then you can dive into all your sweets and treats! Ready Set Boo!
Screenshot by author.

Try out my brand-spanking-new Halloween digital breakout, The Trick or Treat Breakout. Don’t forget you can always email me for the digital lock answers or any activity answers at preimers@tcea.org. If you are new to digital breakouts, read the getting-started information on a previous blog.

You almost might want to try out my original Halloween Breakout, The Boo Breakout. Since September 2017, more than 3,600 students and teachers have solved this breakout. 

Would You Rather?

Would You Rather Halloween Header with orange and yellow question marks.
Screenshot by author.

At a TCEA staff meeting, our Executive Director opened with a Would You Rather team building activity. We each had our own WYR statement. We announced our pick and followed up with the reason(s) why for the selection. It was a lot of fun to learn about my colleague’s choices, so I turned this idea into a Halloween-themed event. You can view the slide deck here or get your own copy of the game here.

Halloween Charades

4 Halloween charades cards: candy, fangs, mask, and trick or treat bag.
Screenshot by author.

I can definitely see charades working on a virtual platform. You could even shout things out while pantomiming because your microphone would be muted. I think this might help my acting abilities. My Halloween charades game contains 36 words or phrases to guess, along with a section of Double Trouble words (just in case you need a challenge.)

Make a copy here.

Halloween-Inspired Synonyms Challenge

Halloween Synonyms Google Form.
Screenshot by author.

When teaching writing to my fourth graders, we talked about overused words like “pretty,” “run,” “eat,” and “walk” that can be spiffed up. I still remember pinning word wheels to my classroom ceiling (back in the pre-Google years!) so my students had access to synonyms. But oh what a pain to take them all down for the standardized writing test.

Check out a Halloween Synonyms Challenge to boost your spooky letter combinations (just another way to say “words”). This could easily be incorporated in an upper elementary or middle school language arts class.

Oldies But Goodies – Guessing and Trivia

I wanted to share a couple more activities I played back in the day with my elementary students. The first,  Name That Costume, is where I read out loud a list of clothing articles and props to my class. My students had pen and paper to guess the costumes. Another game we played was a Halloween Trivia Challenge. This has a little bit of a twist to your typical trivia challenge. In my opinion, there is nothing more frustrating than trying to answer trivia questions if you have no clue – very discouraging. Instead, I gave each student a multiple choice answer sheet with four options with the occasional silly answer blended in for some humor. Make a copy here.

Create the Right Ambience

The Novel Effect app is available in the iOS App store or Google Play. The app contains music and sounds for tons of children’s books and poems. According to the email I just received, Novel Effect is announcing, “FAB-BOO-LOUS New Releases) when it comes to the creepy and the crawly literature. Check out their website.

Want to add music to an activity, silent reading or writing time, or while taking on breakouts? Ambient Mixer is the place to get 57,000 free sound track mixes. If you are a Harry Potter fan, here is the mixer list for you. Check out Lori Gracey’s blog  “The Perfect Music to Read By” for more details. 

May you all have a safe and happy Halloween. And as always, if you have questions or need answers, please email me at preimers@tcea.org.

Image by Larisa Koshkina from Pixabay

More Digital Breakouts

Featured Image created by author in Google Slides.

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