25+ Easy Halloween Homeschool Ideas That Will Make It a Learning Experience
Having some Halloween homeschool ideas ready for the day after Halloween can mean a HUGE save from the sugar hangover and a poor school day! I realized last year how we could use up a ton of that Halloween candy, learn a ton, have so much fun, AND experience a great post-celebration day of school.
In this post you’ll find Halloween homeschool ideas you and your kids will love all month long AND on the day (or week) after Halloween; books, language arts, games, math and more!
HALLOWEEN HOMESCHOOL IDEAS
We aren’t HUGE on Halloween. We love to dress up. I love to put out some cute, spooky decor around the house. But we draw the line at blood and guts.
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In October, for school, I like to tie in a bit of spookiness and a whole lot of pumpkin stuff.
We’ll start our school day over pumpkin smoothies and pumpkin muffins.
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Besides the yumminess, we add in some spooky to our Poetry Teatimes, our read aloud and of course, the day after Halloween is a great time to take the day off from regular school and have a whole day of learning with your CANDY!
Looking for more Halloween and costume ideas? I’ve got some of those too on my personal blog!
Halloween Homeschool Idea: 6 GREAT READ ALOUDS FOR OCTOBER AND HALLOWEEN
There’s so many great read-aloud choices for October, but these are a few great ones we’ve read.
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie // We’re listening to this one on Audible right now.
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie // Classic mystery!
- The Westing Game // Another classic mystery and a quick read.
- The Rats of Nihm // Reading this right now with my kids. Rats are SUPER creepy–great for Halloween!
- The Witches by Roald Dahl // My kids loved this one!
- Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children // Noah and I read this one last fall. It was weird! Not my favorite, but I know a LOT of people who LOVED it!
10 OF OUR FAVORITE HALLOWEEN + OCTOBER PICTURE BOOKS
SO many great titles, but these are some of our very favorites for Halloween and October!
- Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell
- Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall
- Pumpkin Moonshine by Tasha Tudor
- Arthur’s Halloween by Marc Brown
- The Pumpkin Book by Gail Gibbons
- Strega Nona’s Harvest by Tomie dePaola
- Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
- Now It’s Fall by Lois Lensky
- The Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams
- Dem Bones by Bob Barner
A SPOOKY TEA TIME
Edgar Allen Poe is a great poet to study in the month of October! I pick up maple cookies at Trader Joes and Aldi this time of year to have on hand for poetry teatime. Here are a few Edgar Allen Poe books for kids:
GAMES FOR OCTOBER!
We love throwing in a few games at any time of the year, but here are a few great ones for fall and October specifically!
- Clue (Love this retro version!)
- Clue, Jr.
- Shadows in the Forest
- Gnomes at Night (Cooperative game)
- One Night Ultimate Werewolf
THE NOVEMBER 1st SUGAR-HANGOVER
I realized a few years ago how HARD Halloween was on my kids–and myself! We’ would have stayed up late, consumed more sugar than we had in two months combined, and then tried to do school the next day and it never went well. We’d try to get something done, and quickly realized we were too “hungover” for school!
Last year though, I decided to actually USE some of all that candy and do a little learning with it. I had picked up some blank books at the Target Dollar Spot that were shaped like pumpkins and we used those to record all the things we did that day.
We used our candy and spent all morning on math games, geometry, art, science, and more.
HALLOWEEN HOMESCHOOL IDEAS: BLANK BOOKS
A couple of years ago, I noticed that around back-to-school time, Target Dollar Spot started carrying these packages of blank books. I bought several packs that had plain white covers. When October hit, I was so excited to scoop up a few packs of blank books shaped like pumpkins!
This year, I found there were blank books in cat shapes AND several other Halloween-themed covers to choose from. I would LOVE to link to these for you, but you know how the Target Dollar Spot can be–here today, gone tomorrow! You CAN purchase a few things from the Dollar Spot online, but I wasn’t able to find them. I will link to the Dollar Spot HERE just in case they become available online!
I can’t link directly to the blank books I found at Target, but I can link to some plain blank books that would work great to decorate any way you wanted to!
I like these because there are not a ton of pages and it feels really fulfilling when you fill a whole book up!
- Plain White Blank Books
- Pack of Colored Blank Books (you could use the purple, green, or yellow for Halloween!)
Learning with Halloween Candy!
<< I found SO many great ideas from my friend Cindy’s blog. She has a great Candy Homeschool post you can read HERE. >>
Like I said, the day after Halloween last year was pretty laid back as far as school goes. We didn’t do any school other than playing with our candy and filling in our blank Halloween books. Here’s what we put in our books.
Halloween Homeschool Idea: Costume Research
For a little creative writing, I had the kids write about their costumes. They could write about why they chose their costumes, or about the person they dressed as. Jack was Nicola Tesla 😉 and he loved doing a little research and finding out more about him. He wrote out a list of things about Tesla in his blank book.
Candy Charting
We separated all the candy into categories–we always do this, anyone else?? The two biggest groups of candies were chocolate and fruity. The kids drew charts in their books–one for chocolate and one for fruity candy–and charted some of the types of candy and how many of each. This was a great math exercise!
Licorice Geometry
Basically, if we don’t get the Twizzlers out of the house, I will consume them all!! We took those cute little two packs Twizzlers come in at Halloween time to do a little angle practice. We used them to practice what right angles, obtuse, acute, etc are. I also laid some out for the kids in angles and had them measure the licorice angles. So much fun! And we used up all the Twizzlers and I didn’t feel like garbage for eating them all!! Win, win!
Skittle Fractions
The next thing we did was dump out all the Skittles and arrange them by color. We used different colors to practice fractions. Then I gave them problems like, “what fraction of all the Skittles is the red and purple together?” These were great brain activities!
Halloween Candy Taxonomy
The best activity of the day was the Halloween candy taxonomy project. We practiced what kingdom, phylum, class,…..and what that might mean for Halloween candy! We made a HUGE taxonomy chart on the floor until all the candy was classified. Then we drew the chart into our books. It was a lot of work, but so fun!
HOMESCHOOLING AND THE HOLIDAYS
It can be hard to get back into the regular pace of things after a late-night like Halloween. There’s no reason to fight against it–work with it! Don’t schedule anything and let that day be all about relaxing and learning in creative ways. We loved last November 1st school day and I am planning on doing the same thing this year!
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Thank you so much for sharing this, Alicia. I have a little one who is SUPER into Halloween this year, and I’ll be digging into this post all week to make things fun for him! Thank you for thinking of us mamas and putting this together!
Thanks for the Halloween picture books list. My daughter loves Halloween, so every year I buy a new one so she can learn English with it !
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