Halloween is a time for fun and celebration. Children around the world enjoy dressing up in costume and enjoying a few of their favorite treats. The spooky atmosphere opens up plenty of ideas for games and decorations in the classroom. If you’re looking for some safe and fun Halloween classroom party ideas to celebrate at your school, you’ve come to the right place.
Setting the Atmosphere:
Halloween decorations are a fun way to get kids to feel the holiday spirit. Depending on the age group of your students, you should vary the spookiness of your classroom Halloween decorations. For example, a first grade class might not react well to a scary werewolf in the classroom, but a brigade of eighth graders might welcome him with open claws.
Decorate the refreshment tables with Halloween-themed tablecloths, plates, cups and napkins. You can go for a simple orange and black theme, or get a little more adventurous and set up pumpkins, ghosts, witches, bats, black cats and fake cobwebs around the classroom.
Don’t forget to set the tone with a mix of kid-friendly Halloween music. The Monster Mash by Bobby “Boris” Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers is always a classic.
Food Preparation:
Safety first. Keep in mind that many children have food allergies, and this should be taken into consideration when planning any party in the classroom. For example, it’s not a good idea to provide peanut butter cups to a class where some students are allergic to peanuts.
Take note of how many students will be participating in the event. That way there are more than enough snacks, drinks and activities for everybody to enjoy. One way to ensure that you’ll have enough treats for the students is to have a sign-up list for snacks. Request the students to write down what they want to bring to the party. This is also a great way to get parents involved in party planning.
What’s a Halloween party without spooky refreshments? A cupcake decorating station is a great way for students to customize their favorite snack. Simply provide plain cupcakes with a basic frosting and find great add-ons for the kids to use such as gummy worms, black and orange sprinkles, and even colorful gel icing tubes so they can draw.
Halloween is a great opportunity to provide healthy snacks to children too. It doesn’t have to just be about cookies, cakes and candy. Ants on a log is a great snack that uses celery, cream cheese or peanut butter (provided kids aren’t allergic), and raisins to give the illusion of tiny ants across a log. (Remember to keep in mind the students’ food allergies.)
Activity Ideas:
Pumpkin decorating is a timely Halloween tradition that is fun for all ages. To avoid the dangers of sharp objects, decorating the outside of the pumpkin with crayons, markers and stickers provides a fun and safe alternative to carving.
Children-friendly Halloween movies are a great way to spend an afternoon. Depending on the age of the students, some classic examples include It’s the Great Pumpkin; Charlie Brown; Casper; and Hocus Pocus.
A mask decorating contest can be a fun way for children to design their own masks using craft objects including sequins, markers and colorful pipe cleaners. Simply use a paper plate or a piece of thick construction paper as the base and have your students decorate the masks using whatever comes to their imaginations. You can then secure the masks with yarn and have a parade around the classroom.
You can also turn any childhood game into a Halloween game. “Pin the Tail on the Black Cat,” “Musical Broomsticks,” and a Halloween treasure hunt are great examples of kids Halloween party games to get the students up and active. Just remember, one of the greatest parts of Halloween is seeing the kids dress up and use their imaginations. So when planning your Halloween classroom party this year, remember to use your imagination!
Krista Wolfe
Quill.com Contributing Writer
Krista Wolfe is a marketing project manager for Quill.com where she writes to help small businesses, teachers and healthcare professionals make more informed decisions on office essentials. She also writes on our new community blog, Café Quill, about a wide range of business matters such as leadership, productivity and work-life balancing. Krista lives in Chicago and you can find her on Google+ or LinkedIN.