Can you believe it’s already October 20th?
Just 11 days out from Halloween!
Can I also get a heck yes to Halloween near the end of the week this year?!
Last year, when Halloween was on a Wednesday, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it, ha!
Monday and Tuesday my students were SO EXCITED, Wednesday was Halloween, and then Thursday and Friday they were exhausted and coming down from their sugar highs.
The scariest part of the whole week was definitely those sugar crashes combined with a late mid-week bedtime!
This year, I actually have PD on November 1st, so that worked out pretty well for my students!
(Less so for me, because I’ll have to drive 2.5 hours the morning of Nov 1 to get there, but them’s the breaks!)
I am on the Halloween committee at my school this year, so I’m in charge of planning some fun Halloween activities (en français) for the K-2 students.
I figured I would share some of them with you today, in case you were looking for some fun things to do with your students next week!
We have just shy of 100 students in grades K-2, but the activities I want to do are best done in smaller groups of about 10-12 students.
So, I recruited some help from some teachers who don’t have classrooms (reading recovery, resource, the VP, etc), and we are going to divide the classes into smaller groups, and do basically “centres” all around the school.
These centres will only be about 15 mins each, but since there are 8 of them, it’s still about two hours of activities.
I’ll provide all the materials to each teacher before we start, and their only jobs will be to set out the materials I’ve provided, explain each activity as they come to it (I’ll type up some instructions as necessary), supervise their group, and keep an eye on the time to know when to rotate.
The activities are mega simple (and pretty quick), but at 15 minutes per rotation, I think they’ll be perfect!
We’ve never done anything like this with lower elementary, so I’m really excited to see how it will go.
Activity 1: STEM Haunted Houses
For this activity, I will print out little ghost pictures and stick them onto small plastic cups (I already have these for cup stacking in my classroom).
Students will work with a partner to build a haunted house for their ghost out of snap cubes.
The goal will be to have a free-standing house with some kind of roof!
Here’s the pin where I got the inspiration:
Activity 2: Écris la salle
I will hide Halloween vocabulary words around the room, provide clipboards, and students will walk around, search for them, and write them down on the recording sheet.
This is a favourite literacy centre for my students, so I think it will be perfect!
I will use the Écris la salle Halloween resource from Penny’s Primary Printables for this.
Activity 3: Monster races
I will have 2-3 different options for this one, so each teacher can choose what words best for their grade.
For maternelle, I will provide 10 frames, and for grades 1-2, I will provide a number chart to 20 and a 100s chart (this fits with our outcomes in NS).
WIth a partner, students will roll a die and add that many googly eyes to their frame.
The first to fill it (on an exact roll) wins!
Here’s the pin where I got the inspiration:
Activity 4: Mummy Craft
This is another super simple activity from Pinterest.
You can see it here:
Activity 5: Halloween Bingo
I will use the Halloween Bingo from my TPT store for this one.
I will print and laminate 12-15 boards (to be sure I have more than enough for each group!) and the calling cards.
I’ll leave it up to the teacher to decide if they want to be the “caller”, or have a student do it.
My Bingos only have 9 squares, so we can have quick games and lots of winners ;)
(To stretch the game and make it longer, you could have students go for a full card or four corners instead of just a line)
I will leave Halloween mini erasers or stickers for prizes!
Activity 6: Ghost Pompom Poppers
These looked like so much fun that I had to add them to the list – I know my students will be PUMPED to give these a go!
Instead “poppers”, ours will be more like “tossers”, to save on time.
Students will decorate their white cups like ghosts and/or with Halloween stickers, and use them to toss pompoms back and forth with a partner. They will toss them from the cups, and try to catch them in the cups.
Here’s the pin I used as inspiration:
Activity 7: Halloween Printables
For this one, I will leave a variety of options for students to choose from – Halloween colouring sheets, French Halloween word searches, and French Halloween colour-by-codes.
I haven’t chosen which ones yet, but I know there are lots available on TPT.
I will also leave special twisty crayons to make it even more fun!
Activity 8: Halloween Cut & Paste Haunted Houses
Creative Clips added this “Build a Haunted House” activity to TPT the other day, and I HAD to grab it!!
We have five different classes participating, so I bought one for me and four additional licenses using the “Buy Additional Licenses” button on TPT.
Students will colour, cut, and glue their haunted house together.
It’ll probably take longer than 15 minutes, so I will leave instructions to cut and glue them first, and colour once assembled, to hopefully avoid too many lost pieces!
I think that these 8 activities will be a really fun way for our students to kick off Halloween.
We will also have a school-wide costume parade in the morning, and teachers will still have some of the afternoon left over if they want to have their own classroom party or hand out any treats.
The activities are simple and require very little prep, yet doable with groups of 10-12 students, so I’m hopeful that it will go well and we can start a new tradition at my school.
And the best part?
After a fun day, I will be able to send my students home for trick-or-treating, and they will have three whole days to catch up on sleep and get over their sugar crashes before they come back to school! ;)
