Eek! 50+ Halloween Activities, Resources & Apps

“People adore monsters. They fill their songs and stories with them. They define themselves in relation to them.” – Jim Butcher

This upcoming week, people will be celebrating Halloween, All Saints Day, All Souls’ Day and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). For the last month, I have been creating We can have a lot of fun in the classroom and explore various topics that generally would be considered taboo or scary. Students can explore language, math, history, science, culture, traditions, and literature hands-on with engaging topics like monsters, magic, and zombies. Below are tons of resources, lesson ideas, apps, games, recipes and resources for any teacher to have ghoulish fun. I have given various webinars on these topics. You can view the slides and recordings for more details, which are included in the PearlTrees bookmarks below. Just click on a circle to see that resource.

A Few Ideas Outlined in the Presentations

These are some of the ideas I have talked about in the various webinars I’ve given. Find links below and above.

1. Read stories about witches, monsters, creatures, and more. Find a few book ideas here for little kids to adults, such as Interview with a Vampire, Frankenstein, Goosebumps, and more.
2. Dress up and have the kids dress up as the book characters. Do activities related to the book. Here are resources for Julia Donaldson’s Room on the Broom as an example.
3. Have a day when students get to dress up. You can create a theme like Disney characters, characters from books read during the year, people we admire, famous scientists/mathematicians/inventors, and more. Have students act like this character all day- speaking like them and behaviors or give a presentation.
4. Then create stories as a response to a book or ghost stories with Little Bird Tales, Storybird, Zooburst, Kerpoof, or Book Creator for the iPad
5. Compare and contrast world celebrations in which countries celebrate in costume. Use tools like Buncee (one of my favorite presentation tool and IOS/Android apps), Haiku Deck, or Emaze to create incredible presentations
6. Skype with another class or do a Google HangOut in which you interview each other about how you celebrate the one of these upcoming holidays. You could also interview an expert from a museum or organization related to any of these holidays. Have a Halloween costume contest.
7. Create posters about Trick-or-Treat safety using Piktochart or Smores.
8. Draw My Monster or Alien- All students draw a monster but don’t show the drawing. Pair students. Student A describes the monster for student B to draw. After, they match both drawings. Try this as a web or mobile activity with Educreations or Let’s Learn How to Draw Monsters.
9. Monster mindmap. Find the lesson plan here. Try Popplet.
10. Make a magic potion that you can drink. Find the lesson here. Find the recipes here.
11. Make a horror flick- do this with Youtube effects or with free Android and IOS apps like Quo Movie FX, Creature FX, and Action Movie FX
12. Create a haunted house- students work in groups or pairs and are in charge of a section
13. Create multimedia spooky ghost stories with Audio Boo, Sound Cloud, or Voicethread
14. Create a zombie comic or graphic novel. Try Comic Master, Kerpoof, or Comics Head or IOS and Android
15. Play online games with monsters and zombies.
16. Make an infographic of a zombie or monster’s daily routines. Check out this lesson plan for routines.
17. Prepare for a Zombie Apocalypse
18. Students make monster adventure games for their peers to complete with Quest, Scratch, or GamePress for iPad.
19. Haunted Stories Project- Students research a haunted place and its story then create a multimedia presentation. They can try Primary Access, MyHistro (web tool & IOS app),  and Capzles (app and tool)
20. QR code scavenger hunt. Check out Connor’s QR Halloween Scavenger Hunt and Marcia Lima’s scavenger hunt.
21. Make slime with this recipe.
22. Create a spellbook. Check out the lesson on Boggles World.
23. Create a Halloween board game.

More Ideas and Resources

For more ideas and tools try these links:

• Horrified! 20+ Ideas for Halloween
• Interesting Themes for Halloween: 20+ Activities for Kids
• Eek Monsters! Presentation & Ideas
• Ohhh Brains! Zombie Ideas
• Halloween for Kids
• 15+ Halloween Apps
• 50+ Wicked Halloween Ideas, Resources, & Apps
• Livebinder of tons of Halloween games and resources
• Tons of Halloween sites from Cybraryman

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!