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Halloween is always full of excitement for your students. They dress in costumes and collect loads of candy from their neighbors and friends. What kid wouldn’t love that?
As a teacher, it’s a challenge to keep your students focused. This year, why not try some new Halloween themed math resources. They’ll have so much fun that they’ll forget they’re doing math!
5 Ways to Celebrate Halloween in Your Math Class
1. Games for Fun
There’s a time and place for games that are just for fun. If you feel like your students will be distracted with lots of Halloween treats and parent volunteers moving around the room, it might not be the best time to work on something academic.
One of my favorite games is Halloween Bingo. Kids love playing bingo and it’s something that can take 10 minutes or an hour making it super flexible. If you use black and white game boards you can even have your students color the game boards beforehand making it more personal.
I also love using holiday themed markers for the game boards. Halloween Hershey Kisses (affiliate link), candy corns (affiliate link), or Halloween mini erasers (affiliate link) would all make great bingo board markers.
2. Games with Math
If you have 30-60 minutes of class time and want to do something fun with your class but don’t want to waste valuable instruction time, why not try an interactive game of Jeopardy.
Jeopardy is great because you can involve the whole class using teams. Students learn to work with others and they get lots of practice working on different math problems. Because the questions are editable, you can customize for your class. Some teachers even ask students to write a second set of questions and answers to play the game again. So much fun!
Here are some Halloween themed Jeopardy games that your students might enjoy.
3. Differentiated Math Worksheets
Worksheets are great because they can be used the whole month of October leading up to Halloween. They are super versatile and can be used for so many things like Halloween themed math centers, homework, October morning work, review, sub plans or early finishers. They’re a great way to spiral math topics that you think your students might need a little more work on.
Differentiated worksheets can be super helpful because you can differentiate by student or class. With these Halloween worksheets pictured here, there are 4 different levels going from easiest (level 1) to hardest (word problems). To differentiate by student, you can assign each of the 4 different worksheets depending on the student’s ability. To differentiate by class, you could assign level 1 as classwork, level 2 as homework, level 3 as extra credit, then save the word problems for math centers.
4. Digital Task Cards
Digital Task Cards are nice because they are self paced. Students can take as much or as little time as possible. Because they’re self grading, students can also learn from their mistakes. They’re great for teachers because there’s little prep and the grading is automatic.
They’re also super versatile. If students have access to their own technology (laptop, desktop, Chromebook, tablet, or any other mobile device that can access the internet) they can work independently. If not, digital task cards can also be played with the whole class on a Smart Board. They’re totally flexible.
I’m a huge fan of Boom Cards but there are lots of other options for digital resources.
5. Printable Task Cards
Printable task cards are always fun for the holidays. You can play scoot or around the room with them. For scoot, each desk has a different task card and students scoot from one desk to the next answering questions. For around the room, you tape the task cards all over your classroom similar to a scavenger hunt. Students roam the room looking for the task cards and answer the questions on their recording sheets. Students always love getting out of their chairs for math!
Task cards are also great for math centers. You could set up 6 centers with 6 task cards each and students can travel from center to center. Students can work alone or with a partner so they’re very flexible.
I hope you enjoyed these suggestions for 5 ways to celebrate Halloween in your math class.
You might also be interested in Easy Halloween Treats for Your Students.