Favorite Halloween Read Alouds and Activities

I think I got most of these books in a Scholastic book order at some point and have used them every year since.  This year I decided to make these read alouds even more meaningful by adding new reading response activities to go with the stories.

‘Spooky Hour’ is a fun book full of rhymes that I used today with my little friends.  We reviewed examples of rhymes before reading the book and then I told my friends that while I was reading today I wanted them to listen for rhyming words.  Normally, I have my students give me a thumbs up when they hear two words that rhyme, but today I had them say “Boo!” each time they heard rhyming words.  After they said “Boo!” we’d go over the two words that rhymed on that page.  Now this normally would be a little annoying, but since it’s Halloween themed and only for this book, I was okay with it! (I also emphasized that it was ONLY for this story…hopefully I won’t regret this next time we do a rhyming read aloud!) After reading the entire story, we made a list together on the board of all the different rhyming pairs they heard in the story. They also did their own rhyming sentences as a follow up where they found two words that rhymed and adding pictures to match. (For differentiation, some students made up their own words while others chose from cards.) I was also super excited because later on when we were working on our ‘making words journal’ together, and we had some rhyming words, one of my little friends said, “Hey- this is just like our spooky story!” I was so happy for the connection!

‘Halloween Fun’ is a quick read aloud that can be used for a variety of things- character details, story sequence, etc. I used it for practice with identifying details about characters.  I did a picture walk first and introduced them to the characters in the book. I then told them that while I was reading I wanted them to pay attention to what each character was wearing for his/her costume.  While reading the story we  stopped and added the costume next to each character’s name. After reading, each little friend chose a character and drew a picture of that character on the iPads using Skitch. They then labeled the picture with the character’s name and costume. Their creations turned out very cute!

This is a mummy. 🙂

Next week I’ll be reading ‘Good Night Goon’ along with ‘Good Night iPad’ to my little friends and then we’ll complete a venn diagram comparing & contrasting the two books! (You could also use the original Good Night Moon for this but since we are 1:1 technology at my school I figured I might as well use the iPad version!) 🙂 The more I can get my little friends making connections among books, the better! ‘It’s Pumpkin Time’ is a great book which explains how to grow a pumpkin. We’ll be using it later this week to activate our prior knowledge about pumpkins! And ‘Shake dem Halloween Bones’ is just a great read aloud/song book!

Aren’t Halloween read aloud books just so fun? 🙂 Thanks Holly for hosting the great weekly linky!