Looking for educational Halloween activities with all treats, no tricks? You’ve come to the right place! Here, you’ll find a total of 31 Halloween activities that you can use to teach or practice learning skills from home–one idea for each day of October.
First, you’ll find 13 Halloween-themed STEM activities (STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math) perfect for PreK and elementary-aged learners. Then, read on for 13 more themed reading and writing activities along with 5 Halloween art projects to help your kids practice creative thinking skills.
13 Halloween STEM Activities for Kids
Use these 13 Halloween-themed learning activities to practice science and math skills at home through the month of October.
1.This pumpkin-themed building challenge makes for a great beginner’s engineering activity.
2. Instead of paper airplanes, make paper bats and see who can fold theirs to fly the farthest.
3. Skeletons can be spooky, but it’s going “tibia” okay! With this STEM craft, your little ones can learn about the skeletal system.
4. This Halloween STEM challenge shows children how to make a robot out of household items.
5. Using a few popsicle sticks and rubber bands, your little ones can create a mini-catapult that they can test out on their Halloween candy.
6. Try this Dancing Ghosts science experiment with your children to teach them about static electricity.
7. If your children have a science fair project at school this year, you can try this pumpkin volcano activity to practice.
8. Make these fizzing pumpkins from a few everyday ingredients for a fun Halloween science activity.
9. Practice counting, adding, and subtracting numbers with this Spider Roll and Cover game.
10. Teach children about shapes with this head-scratching Halloween tangrams activity.
11. It’s aliiiiiive! With vinegar and baking soda, you can make franken-gummy worms as an experiment fit for a mad scientist.
12. If your little one is fascinated by creepy crawlies, they’ll love this Halloween STEM project that challenges them to build a spider web out of yarn or pipe cleaners.
13. After carving jack-o’lanterns, make pumpkin oobleck for a fascinating at-home science project. What’s oobleck? It’s a word used for things that are somewhere between liquids and solids.
13 Halloween-Themed Reading Activities to Celebrate the Spooky Season
Use these 13 reading activities to practice reading and writing skills. If your child has not yet learned to write, you can still enjoy many of these activities by helping them draw a picture instead.
14. Play this skeleton-themed matching game to practice recognizing uppercase and lowercase alphabet letters.
15. If your child loves a good brain teaser, they’ll enjoy solving these Halloween riddles.
16. Learn how to write a haiku together, then challenge your child to write their own short poem about Halloween or autumn.
17. Make a Halloween pop-up card. Afterward, your child can write a sweet and spooky message inside and give it to a friend or family member.
18. This haunted house-themed writing activity will encourage children to use their imagination as they put together a delightfully scary scene.
19. If your child is learning how to write their name, they’ll enjoy putting together this pumpkin-themed name puzzle.
20. Read aloud and discuss these Halloween-themed “Would You Rather?” questions.
21. PreK and early elementary-aged learners may enjoy singing along to “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider!” For an added challenge, see if they can follow along reading the lyrics at the bottom of the video.
22. Use this Halloween word search to help kids practice finding and recognizing new words.
23. All you need to play this Halloween roll and read activity is a six-sided die and an interest in practicing sight words.
24. Practice writing skills by building your own scary story together with this worksheet from Scholastic Book Clubs. This worksheet is similar to the sight word activity linked above but more suitable for older elementary children.
25. Borrow the classic Room on the Broom picture book from your local library, then have fun coloring and putting together this themed craft.
26. In these creative writing prompts, children can practice using new vocabulary words as they write sentences about what it would be like to have a pet monster.
5 Artsy Halloween Crafts and Activities
Art can teach important learning skills and awaken creativity. Use these five fun art-themed Halloween activities for families to encourage imaginative thinking.
27. For a Halloween-themed STEAM activity (that stands for activities that bring together science and art), try this autumn leaf craft.
28. Build two or three of these monster paper plate puppets, then hold your own puppet show. Older children may even enjoy writing a script for the show.
29. Follow the instructions here to build a pumpkin-themed sensory bin that can also help your child learn about the alphabet.
30. With this Halloween card craft, your little one can practice cutting paper using children’s scissors.
31. For a spooky seasonal twist on paper snowflakes, make paper spider webs.
For more easy and educational Halloween activities, check out these 13 spooky read-alouds from your local library.
