Halloween week brings a lot of excitement into PreK and Kindergarten classrooms. Costumes, class parties and changes to the daily schedule can make it harder for young children to settle. Short, familiar learning activities with a Halloween theme help: children get the fun of bats, pumpkins and moons, and you keep math and reading practice going.
This year Halloween falls on a Saturday, so many classrooms will celebrate on Friday, October 30. The ideas below work any day that week, and most of them take less than fifteen minutes.
Keep Halloween Friendly, Not Frightening
For three-, four- and five-year-olds, the best Halloween worksheets are cute rather than scary. Choose pictures such as pumpkins, bats, owls, black cats, moons, stars and spider webs, and skip anything gory or frightening.
Some families do not celebrate Halloween. A simple way to include everyone is to offer a fall version of the same activity, with leaves, apples and acorns instead of bats and costumes. The skill stays the same; only the pictures change.
Halloween Math Worksheets That Build Number Sense
Halloween math works best when children can see and touch what they count.
Count and color
Give children a page with small groups of pumpkins or bats. Ask them to touch each picture as they count, then color the group or write the number. Touching each object helps them match one number word to one object.
If you want ready-made pages, the Fall Coloring Pages | Fall Math Coloring Sheets set combines counting, ten frames and comparing with simple fall pictures. Our article on using fall coloring pages for early math has teacher prompts for each skill.
Ten frames with Halloween counters
Ten frames show children how a number is built, for example that 7 is “5 and 2 more.” Print practice pages with the free Ten Frame Worksheet Maker (to 10 or to 20, with an answer key), then let children fill an empty frame with paper bats or orange pom-poms before they write the number.
Useful questions:
- “How many are in the frame?”
- “How many empty spaces are left?”
- “How many more do we need to make 10?”
More or fewer
Put two groups side by side, for example 4 bats and 6 pumpkins, and ask which group has more. Children can line the groups up to check. Kindergartners who are ready can move on to the words greater than and less than: our Greater Than Less Than Worksheets and the article on how to teach greater than and less than show a step-by-step approach.
Measure a pumpkin
A real pumpkin is a great math tool. Children can measure around it with yarn, compare it with a classmate’s pumpkin, or guess how many cubes tall it is and then check. Our Pumpkin Life Cycle Worksheets add the science side with the parts of a pumpkin.
Halloween Phonics Worksheets and Letter Sound Games
Phonics practice can follow the same theme without many new materials.
Beginning sounds
Say a Halloween word slowly and ask children for the first sound: bat starts with /b/, moon with /m/, pumpkin with /p/, web with /w/. A simple worksheet can show a picture and two letters, and children circle the letter that matches the first sound.
A Halloween letter hunt
Hang Halloween alphabet posters and play “I spy a letter”: you say a sound, and children point to the poster that starts with it. You will find more daily routines in how to use alphabet posters for letter recognition.
Rhyming fun
Halloween words rhyme easily: bat, cat, hat; moon, spoon; boo, two. Say three words and ask which two rhyme, or let children make up a silly rhyme for each picture.
Halloween Sight Words Worksheets and Games
For Kindergarten, keep sight word practice short and playful.
- Sight word bingo. Type your class’s words into the free Bingo Card Maker. Every card is different, and it prints caller cards to cut out.
- Sentence frames. Use frames such as “I see a ___.” or “I can see the ___.” and let children add a Halloween picture word.
- Word search. Older Kindergartners and 1st graders can look for the week’s sight words in a puzzle from the Word Search Maker, which comes with an answer key.
Free Printable Halloween Worksheets in Minutes
When you need something quick for a party day, early finishers or a substitute, these free tools make printable pages in a couple of minutes:
- Maze Maker: “Help the bat find its way home,” from big and easy to small and tricky.
- Name Coloring Page Maker: bubble-letter names in the Fall design with pumpkins and leaves, for the whole class at once.
- Name Tracing Worksheets: name writing practice with start dots and arrows.
You can find all of them on the free teacher tools page.
Keep the Day Calm
Party days are loud. Before the excitement starts, review your voice levels with the Halloween voice level posters, and use a visual countdown such as the free Classroom Timer for clean-up and transitions. Our guide to teaching voice levels has more ideas.
A few short math, phonics and sight word activities with a Halloween theme give the week a fun focus without losing the learning.
