Halloween in the classroom—kids are excited, teachers are busy—sometimes it feels easier to skip the holiday altogether, right? Here’s the truth: you can celebrate Halloween without going overboard or prepping for hours, and still keep students focused on meaningful work. These easy Halloween activities for kids are low-prep, fun, and tied to writing and grammar standards.
The best part? They also work perfectly as Halloween learning stations, keeping your students engaged and productive while you keep your sanity intact.
A craft that also sneaks in strong adjective practice? Yes, please! Students use simple pumpkin templates to create their own jack o’lanterns. Once their pumpkins are assembled, they describe them using powerful adjectives.
This is a great way to push beyond “big” and “happy” and stretch students’ vocabulary.
Teacher Tip: Keep a list of “juicy adjectives” on the board to support students who need help coming up with descriptive words.
Students love sharing their Halloween traditions—whether it’s trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, or dressing up in costumes.
In this reflective journal activity, they write about their favorite Halloween memory or tradition, then edit their sentences for capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Finally, they add a quick illustration.
Teacher Tip: This makes a great warm-up or independent writing station. Pair it with a simple editing checklist for accountability.
Halloween is the perfect time to review real-world safety rules. Consider completing this informative ELA activity for Halloween safety rules before kids head out for trick-or-treating with their families.
Students will read pre-written sentences and sort them into “Halloween Do’s” and “Halloween Don’ts.” After sorting, they write and illustrate their own safety rules.
Teacher Tip: This activity reinforces reading, sorting, and writing complete sentences—and it connects to real-life conversations families are already having at home.
Halloween and Christmas are the top two holidays for kids. Take advantage of their natural interest by doing a fun comparison, enhancing their literacy, critical thinking, and writing skills.
For the holiday compare activity, students start by sorting activity cards into two categories: Halloween and Christmas. Then, they use a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the holidays.
Teacher Tip: Encourage students to use transition words like both, however, and on the other hand in their sentences to strengthen their compare-and-contrast writing.
Students will light up when they see this topic! First, they talk with a partner about the pros and cons of eating candy. Then, they record their ideas in a T-chart.
This activity gives them practice organizing opinions and preparing to write about both sides of a topic. If you’re feeling generous, consider pairing this with a sweet treat (for research, of course!)
Teacher Tip: This is a sneaky way to practice opinion writing while letting students have fun with a topic they care about!
Remember: You don’t need hours of prep or new materials to celebrate Halloween in your classroom. These easy Halloween activities for elementary students are engaging, standards-based, and festive—without the stress. A little seasonal fun goes a long way!
Our free candy corn math game is just as easy to implement, but you’ll find a few cool Halloween math craft ideas, too.
Hey, y’all! My name is Amy Lemons and I am passionate about providing students with both engaging and effective standards-based Math and ELA lessons.
Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!
One Response
Nice guide — the tips are simple but effective. Thanks!