Halloween is a favorite holiday for kids because it’s a time to bring characters from their imagination and favorite books and movies to life through costumes and make-believe play. But between the candy, crafts, costumes, and decorations, Halloween activities can get pretty expensive.
The good news is, there’s no need to break the bank to create a fun, memorable classroom Halloween party for your students. With these 15 budget-friendly ideas, you can plan a festive day in the classroom to celebrate the spooky season.
1. Decorate Pumpkins
Separate your students into groups. Depending on your local options, this idea works well for any size gourd, whether real or fake. Give each group a pumpkin, some paint, glue, black construction paper, glitter, or anything else you’d like, and let their imaginations run wild as they work together to decorate it.
2. Create Halloween Game Pieces
Swap out the regular pieces in your board games with Halloween-themed pieces. This activity can be made even more fun if you invite your students to create their own Halloween-themed piece for one board game that your class will play.
Alternatively, you can separate your students into groups and give each group a board game to make their own pieces for before they play!
3. Have Spooky Story Time
Most older children enjoy a good spooky story. Make this favorite Halloween classroom activity even more exciting by turning off the lights and bringing in lanterns, or asking your students to bring in flashlights in advance.
Next, let your students read or share their favorite spooky stories with the class. Here are some great ideas for classroom Halloween stories to get started.
4. Create an Estimation Game
This is a fun way to teach your students about estimation. All you need is a clear glass or plastic jar. Fill it with a certain number of Halloween candy and treats, like candy corn, chocolate chips, pumpkin seeds, decorated monster cookies, or anything you’d like. You can even use plastic spiders, spider rings, popsicle sticks, googly eyes, cotton balls, or any other Halloween treats — all of which you can get at your nearest dollar store.
Or, make a few jars with different things in each and ask teams of students to guess how many of each item is in each jar. Whoever guesses the most correctly wins!
5. Play a Pin-the-Shapes Game
For this easy Halloween party activity, all you need is some butcher paper, poster board, or any colored construction paper you like. Make some cutouts with a piece of orange butcher paper, and play a game of Pin the Shapes on the Pumpkin.
6. Have a Mini Costume Race
Ask your students’ families to donate dress-up clothes for their children to play with for the day. Have your students race to create costumes with these clothes, allowing them to come up with as many creative costume ideas as they can with what they have available.
7. Make Writing Time Spooky
Play a recording of scary sound effects as your students pen Halloween writing prompts. You can also forgo the music and have your students write during a quieter time to truly get them into the spirit of this spooky holiday. It’s a simple, cute idea for adding ambience to all Halloween classroom activities.
8. Play Trick-or-Treat
Invite some students to “go trick or treating” in the classroom while others count out “candy” (such as Halloween-themed erasers) and drop them into the buckets.
9. Create Frankenstein Creatures
Divide your students into small groups and hand out crayons, paint, glitter, glue, or any other art supplies you’d like. Have each child draw part of a make-believe creature that they can then “stitch” together! Then, display all of the little monsters your classroom creates into a “group portrait” on your bulletin board.
10. Play Halloween Charades
Combine Halloween images and vocabulary for a game of charades. Some ideas to act out include: witch, bat, black cat, vampire, mummy, zombie, skeleton, werewolf, goblin, jack-o-lantern, spider, and eerie ghosts.
11. Play a Game of Magnetic Hangman
Set out magnetic letters and pieces of a snap-together skeleton, and students can try to guess mystery words (such as each other’s names or Halloween-themed words) in a game of hangman. An incorrect guess means a limb gets snapped on, and a full skeleton means game over!
12. Get Creative With Circle Time
Encourage oral and social skills during circle sharing time by having students toss each other a light-up squishy toy and ask each other questions, such as “What are you going to be for Halloween?” or “What’s your favorite candy?” Kids love to talk about themselves!
13. Play Flashlight Tag
Designate a student as the first to be “it” in a game of flashlight tag. Turn off the lights and let your students play this fun, spookier version of the classic schoolyard game in the classroom.
14. Get Dramatic
Add donated Halloween props to your dramatic play center so your students can make it into a haunted house, or put on a mini Halloween play that they have created together. You can even recreate your students’ favorite funny Halloween read-alouds for this activity.
15. Incorporate STEM Into Halloween
In the spirit of Halloween, you can use this opportunity to talk about the human body while examining an x-ray on your smart board. Teach your students about the skeletal system, blood, or anything else for this science unit.
And remember, price doesn’t matter to kids. They’ll love anything you do. Share these amazing Halloween read-alouds below! You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store.