Freeze Dance
Always a hit and perfect for all elementary grades. Get some spooky music or fun dance music and let the kids dance. When the music stops, everyone freezes. The last one to stop moving is out. Makes for great pictures or video.
Supplies needed: Spooky music or dance music on your phone.
Halloween Bozo Buckets
This game is based on Bozo buckets and uses pumpkin buckets that children use to collect candy on Halloween night. Use five or six buckets and place them in a line (front to back). Give children a ball or bean bag to try to toss into each pumpkin beginning with the closest pumpkin.
Halloween Bowling
If you have a large hallway to use for your classroom party, try some Halloween bowling. You can use empty 2 liter soda bottles for the pins (add a bit of sand or water to give the pins a little weight). Grab a small lightweight foam
pumpkin from a craft store as your bowling ball OR use a real pumpkin and let the kids bowl.
Supplies needed: Several empty 2 liter bottles filled with a bit of sand or water (when finished, give the bottles to a 4th grade teacher for a project done second semester if the bottles are clear!) A real or store-bought foam pumpkin.
Monster Murals
Cover a wall with craft paper and trace a child’s outline on it three or four times. Divide kids into groups, and ask each group to draw a monster, using the outline.
Supplies needed: Light-colored craft paper (you may ask if you can take it from the bolts at school) and lots of markers, preferably thicker markers.
Mummy Wrap
Mummy wrap is a blast. Divide the kids into teams of two – one person is the mummy and one person is the wrapper. Give the wrapper a roll of toilet paper and have them wrap their teammate quickly. Whichever team is done first, wins. For a variation for older kids, once the mummies are wrapped, have a mummy limbo contest. Use a broom stick and have the kids limbo as low as they can go without breaking their toilet paper wrapping.
Supplies needed: Several rolls of toilet paper, a broom handle if considering limbo.
Pass the Pumpkin
Sit in a circle. Provide a plastic pumpkin for children to pass while the volunteer plays some music. Children pass the pumpkin to the tempo of the music. Alternate between slow and fast. When the music stops the child who has the pumpkin stands and takes a bow. Continue process.
Scary Story Circle
Fill a pumpkin with several slips of paper that each contain a single Halloween-related word. Gather kids in a circle on the floor, and ask each child to pull a word out of the pumpkin. After they know their words, start the story with “It was a dark and stormy
night . . .” Take turns around the circle, asking each child to add a few sentences using his or her word at least once.
Supplies needed: A plastic pumpkin filled with slips of paper with halloween-related words.
Spider Web
Perfect for a group of four to eight kids. Arrange kids in a circle and give each one a golf ball-sized ball of yarn. Help each child tie an end of the yarn around his waist. Taking turns, each player tosses his yarn to someone else in the circle. When they reach the end of the yarn, they’ve created a web! Now their only challenge is to untangle themselves.
Supplies needed: Enough golf-ball sized balls of yarn for each child in the class (bring scissors in case you must cut the yarn to untangle the web!)
Additional Games
Have the kids try their hands at these fun Halloween-inspired games.