Halloween Learning Activities for Kids

Halloween and learning? Spooky thought… You know as well as I do that your kids are excited about Halloween and just want to enjoy the day, but what if they can enjoy the day and learn at the same time? That is a win-win situation in my book! So, what can your kids do to improve their math and comprehension skills on Halloween?

You can work on your math, observation, and memory skills on Halloween. And when you improve your observation skills and do something with them, comprehension skills improve.

After trick-or-treating, once your kids are home, have them sort their candy. Remember, sorting and categorizing items is critical to learning math concepts. Classifying is the action of putting objects into sets based on common traits. You can even chart your results.

Improve math skills with these Halloween activities

• Compare your candy (greater than, less than, ingredients, size, shape)
• Describe and compare shapes
• Spatial relationships (thin vs. thick, spherical vs. cube, etc.)
• One-to-one correspondence (match one Kit Kat to one Snickers, or two to two, etc.)
• Addition (when you get another piece)
• Subtraction (when you eat a piece)
• Count by 2’s, 3’s, 4’s, 5’s, and 10’s
• Measure the length of the candy (use units of measurement such as 3 Hershey’s kisses vs. 5 Hershey’s kisses, or 5 candy corns vs 8 candy corns, or even inches)

In the world of mathematics, there are patterns, geometric shapes (circles, squares, etc.), comparisons (greater than, less than, equal to), and classifications or sets (numbers divisible by two, prime numbers, etc.).

Once you’ve sorted and compared your candy, make a chart or several charts that give the results of your comparisons. Then, you can compare them with results from a friend or sibling.

Comprehension Halloween Activities

While your kids are out trick or treating, make a point of noticing and observing. Talk about your observations while you are out, going door to door. Look at and try to remember the different costumes others are wearing.

How many ghosts do they see? How many witches, vampires, mad scientists, black panthers, or princesses do they see? Do some houses have Halloween decorations up? Are the houses spooky? Do the houses have a lot of lights and pumpkins outside? For those that attend parties, they can think about the costumes the party attendees wore.

After your kids get home, record those observations. Then, pick two of the costumes that you liked the most and use them for a quick writing exercise. Compare and contrast the different Halloween costumes:

1. Colors
2. Shapes
3. Most unusual
4. Easiest to wear
5. Funniest/silliest
6. Scariest
7. Animal
8. Famous person
9. Most difficult to get around in etc.

The Final Step to Improve Comprehension Skills With Halloween Activities

Use one of the storyboard forms or the compare-contrast fill-in-the-blank form from Ten Minutes to Better Writing and Study Skills. It’s quick, easy, and fun! You can even draw pictures of the costumes you saw and add them to your compare-contrast form. In addition to helping you make comparisons, this activity also builds memory skills. The act of writing or drawing what you saw aids in building long-term memory skills. Use Ten Minutes to Better Writing and Study Skills to improve comprehension skills on Halloween.

Additional fun family activities are provided weekly in our After School Reading Program. Scholar Within’s Homeschool Reading & Spelling Program integrates the five principles of reading with curriculum to improve overall reading skills.

Candy Buy Back Program

Another thing our family would do was to offer our kids the choice of trading their candy for a penny apiece. Nowadays, a nickel or dime may be more appropriate for candy they like, and maybe a penny apiece for candy they are not so crazy about.

To begin with, decide together how much each piece of candy is worth. Have your kids group the different values of candy, totaling up how much their candy is worth.

Then, have them decide how much candy they want to trade for money.

We then took the candy we bought back from our kids to our corresponding workplaces, which may or may not have been a good idea!

Who is Scholar Within?

Scholar Within was founded by learning expert Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., BCET. Bonnie began designing and developing her custom educational tools when she started her private learning center in the 1990s. Teachers kept asking what she was using with the kids who saw her because of the dramatic improvements that the kids made in school. From there, Bonnie made her materials available to teachers and families worldwide.

Now, Bonnie Terry has turned her materials into a full-service online program that you can follow step-by-step at home, on your schedule. School alone is not enough anymore. Bonnie’s programs boost your kid’s overall learning skills by focusing on improving the auditory, visual, and tactile processing areas of your brain to make it work more efficiently.

Learn more about Scholar Within.