Halloween Activity Ideas for Early Readers
Most kids just love Halloween! Incorporating Halloween activity ideas into your literacy routine this month helps engage your readers. I’ve got a few ideas to share with you that are quick to put together. You just need a few materials and you’ll be all set for Halloween fun!
Letter Halloween Activity Idea
If you have some letter stickers laying around, like I do, grab them for this activity. Otherwise, you can just use printed letters. I had these little cauldrons and pumpkin notebooks from Target. You can also simply use a piece of paper…orange paper would be extra motivating, right now! Cut the letters out and place them in the cauldron. Then, either you can write a letter on each page in the notebook, or, have students do the letter writing.
- Students will grab a letter from the cauldron.
- They will say the name and sound of the letter.
- Students will put the letter on the matching page in the book.
- Repeat this till the letters are all gone.
Word Halloween Activity Idea
Students need frequent practice with sight words. The more often you can have them reading, writing/making the words, the more likely they are to remember the words. For this, I used a whiteboard, notebook, letter stickers, witch’s finger and little pumpkin erasers. Again, this would work with just a piece of paper and printed letters/letter tiles, as well.
- Either you or your students write a few sight words on a whiteboard.
- Draw a pumpkin in the notebooks.
- Students will then make the words from the whiteboard, with the stickers.
- Students need to read the word, before making it, and after.
- Students can use the witch’s finger to point to the word as they read.
- Once the word has been made, they can place the pumpkin eraser above the word, to visually show you they’re done with that word.
Halloween Freebies
Many early readers are also continuously working on identifying beginning sounds in words. You can use Halloween themed images to practice. Students simply choose a picture, identify the beginning sound and then record it on the recording page.
Students also love reading about Halloween. I have a simple story that students can read, identifying things about Halloween. The basic sentences will help boost readers’ confidence as they read about a familiar theme.
You can grab both of these freebies here, or just the beginning sounds activity here!
Halloween Books
You know I can never have enough books! So, mixing in holiday read alouds, makes me happy! I love books with repeated texts because it gets students to naturally read along with you. This is the House That Monsters Built is perfect for this. It’s a spinoff from There Was an Old Lady…
Also, seeing characters they’re familiar reading about, helps readers connect to the text. The Berenstain Bears books are popular with many, so this one is a hit as well!
Do you have any favorite books or Halloween activity ideas? I’d love to hear about them!
