- Saturday 06 October 2018
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It’s time for hair-raising Halloween and it seems students are increasingly excited about this typically American holiday. What began as a religious celebration on the eve of All Hallow’s Day in remembrance of the dead, has become the commercial trick-or-treating, costume-wearing, pumpkin-carving and apple-bobbing celebration it is today. So rather than treat it as a simple classroom craft opportunity, why not try to weave a ghoulish theme across the learning areas for some spine-chilling results?
Haunting history
- Make it a history-themed day, where students have to dress up as an Australian historical figure they have learned about or want to learn more about, or act as the ghost of the historical figure and be prepared to answer questions about them.
Ghastly geography
- Explore monsters from around the world, such as the Loch Ness monster in Scotland, Big Foot in North America, Baba Yaga from Eastern Europe, Basilisk from Europe and the Death Worm from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.
- Explore countries around the world and compare how they celebrate Halloween.
Alarming artwork
- Using water colours and oil pastels, students create a haunted house picture with silhouettes drawn in black oil pastels and a muted water colour background just like these (http://www.artteacherinla.com/spooky-house-halloween-art-lesson/). Then students use persuasive writing to create an advertisement to sell the spooky house.
- Create a piece of scratch art as shown below with a Halloween theme. Students colour a piece of paper with crayons and paint over the colours with black poster paint which is left to dry. Then, using a toothpick, etch out a picture or drawing to reveal the colours beneath.
Scary science
- Students learn all about a particular type of spider and prepare some information and notes about their spider. Be ready to be answer questions by classmates during an interview with their spider.
- Learn about bats and their special features and ability to use echolocation.
- Conduct an investigation into whether the size of a pumpkin is an indicator of how many seeds the pumpkin contains. Students hypothesise, measure, collect data and observe different-sized pumpkins.
Mysterious maths
- Present various Halloween themed math challenges such as this: https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/mathchat/mathchat009.shtml
- Colllect data about various Halloween-related items such as favourite treat, favourite costume, favourite scary movie for students to create various graphs.
- Use grid paper to draw one half of a spider for a partner to complete. Use the spiders to plot the grid coordinates of each join, then give the coordinates to a partner to draw the spider.
Loony literacy
- Create humorous and scary poetry to be written onto epitaphs.
- Use Halloween-themed books as a launchpad into activities, such as Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, or a chapter book like the Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling, Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine, The Witches by Roald Dahl, or a poem like The Spider and the Fly as a video or text (https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/the-spider-and-the-fly-by-mary-howitt).
Terrifying technologies
- Students use a digital camera to take a photo of themselves, resize it and print it in colour. Students use their image to create a face changer (http://bkids.typepad.com/bookhoucraftprojects/2011/10/creepy-facechanger-halloween-diy-mask-cardstock-.html ).
- In pairs, students design a monster of their own and build a model using clay.
- In teams, students create an outfit for a vampire, using suitable materials considering their purpose.
Supernatural STEM
- Conduct a variety of pumpkin-related projects (http://www.teachersareterrific.com/2016/10/time-for-some-spooky-stem.html), such as building a pumpkin elevator, pumpkin launcher and a haunted house maze.
- Engage students in an engineering challenge to build a bone bridge (https://www.feelgoodteaching.com/2016/09/halloween-activity-stem-challenge-bone-bridge.html).