Tag: Halloween

Games, K-12

13 Little to No Prep Halloween Activities

Terri Eichholz

I know that not everyone who reads this blog celebrates Halloween. But I have seen an uptick in people visiting my Halloween posts in the last week, so I thought I could put this out there to help out any teachers looking for some quick Halloween Brain Breaks.

My Halloween Wakelet has over 70 bookmarks, but some lessons require a bit more prep than others. So I combed through it in order to highlight a few for you that could be last-minute time-fillers. You know, for those moments your class gets called to take school pictures and you end up waiting in line for twenty minutes, or when you need to conference with a student and want the rest of the class to be engaged, etc…

selective focus photography of piled pumpkins
K-12

October and Halloween Wakelets

Terri Eichholz

I’ve been working on my Wakelet collections so that I’ll eventually have one for every month. To be consistent, I split my Halloween/October collection into two different collections. So, there is now a Halloween one and an October one (which contains a link to the Halloween one as well.)

Some upcoming October holidays/celebrations that you can really have fun with in the classroom are Powers of 10 Day (10/10 of course!) and Global Maker Day on 10/18. I’m still adding resources as they show up on social media, so keep on the lookout for more ideas for those.

In the meantime, the Halloween Wakelet is loaded with lots of math, literature, and science ideas. Many of them can be modified easily to use for a fall theme if you are in a school where Halloween lessons are discouraged. There are free digital breakouts in the collection, a slow reveal graph about candy sales, and tons of puzzles. One of my favorite lessons that I used to do with my primary students was Monster Box, and you will find an updated link to that with a free link to a Google Slides presentation from SlidesMania with cute monsters. It uses the Visible Thinking Routine, “Step Inside,” and I am sure you can find other ways to adapt it.

Of course, don’t forget that September still has a few more fun days left, including International Podcasting Day. If you want to get a head start on October and celebrate International Podcasting Day at the same time, here is a wonderful list from @GladeJeff of Halloween Podcasts for grades PK-12.

red leaf trees near the road
K-12, Teaching Tools, Websites

October 2021

Terri Eichholz

I’m a bit behind in blog posts, but the good news is that a little prep work from last year will pay off for this year! You can find all kinds of links for October activities, including Powers of 10 Day (October 10th) and Halloween, in this Wakelet I started last October. I’ve added a few new links that I got from MakerEd, TCEA, and Ditch That Textbook, and will continue to add more throughout this month. I also recommend that you check out the “Holiday Ideas” page on Big Ideas 4 Little Scholars, as Donna Lasher has a nice monthly list of activities that she keeps. If you find any broken links or want to recommend a resource I’ve missed on my Wakelet, please comment below!

green and white pumpkin on brown wooden table
Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com
3-12, Art, Creative Thinking, Education, Science, Student Products

Halloween Paper Circuit Projects

Terri Eichholz

I think these Halloween Paper Circuit templates from Makerspaces.com look like a lot of fun.  You can download the templates for free, but will need to purchase the other supplies.  The instructions are excellent.  I plan to try this with my 3rd graders.  Once they learn the concept, I am going to challenge them to light up a picture of their choice to encourage some creativity and give them the opportunity to apply what they have learned about circuits.  By the way, if you are looking for some other paper circuit projects, here is a post I did on ones that our Maker Club did.

Simple_paper_circuit.jpeg.jpeg
image from Wikimedia Commons

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image from Pixabay

Apps, Education, K-12, Student Products

What Kind of Roads Do Ghosts Haunt?

Terri Eichholz

Both Halloween and the Hour of Code have been on my mind lately, so I was excited to find this post on “5 Ideas for a Spooky Scratch-o-ween.”  Since I teach gifted students from K-5 in my school, many of my older students have used Scratch.   Some of them like to use it to create presentations or make games.  However, my newer students need an introduction on how use this block coding tool.  I particularly like the suggestion to animate some appropriate Halloween jokes using Scratch (or Scratch Jr. on the iPads).  Here is a link to some goofy Halloween jokes that are good for elementary students.  Rosemary Slattery shows some brief examples of animated Scratch Halloween jokes here.  Robots are also fun to program for joke-telling.  We’ve used the Dash robot as a comedian in the past, and it is a new challenge for the students to find a way to code it so the timing works between the joke and the punchline.

Speaking of punchlines, what kind of roads do ghosts haunt?  Dead ends, of course.  (You’ll find that in the list of jokes linked above.)

halloween-1757492_960_720.jpg

3-12, Apps, Art, Education, Student Products

The Scream (Reblog)

Terri Eichholz

UPDATE 10/13/2021: You can now see an updated list of all of the Halloween/October resources, including more Scream ideas, I’ve collected by visiting this Wakelet!

This post was originally published in 2016.  I think it’s a fitting time of year to bring it back.

We all have things that scare us, of course.  In the book that my 5th grade gifted students are reading, The Giver, the main character is “apprehensive” about an upcoming event.  To help the students connect to the text, I asked them to list some of the things that worry or scare them.  Using our green screen and the Green Screen app by DoInk, I had the students superimpose themselves on the image of Edvard Munch’s, The Scream.  The students then used the WordFotoapp to add their specific fears to the picture.  Here is one result. (You can click on it to see a larger view.)

scream

When I looked closely at this student’s final product, I noticed the word, “division.”  I was a little upset because I had told the students not to put silly things just to get a laugh.  In my mind, division and multiplication would fall into that category, especially since this particular student has never had any problems achieving well in math.

“Why did you put this word when I told you not to put something silly?” I asked him as I pointed at his picture.

He looked at me solemnly.  “I meant the division of people.  You know, how war and other things divide us.”

Oh.

It’s good I asked…