Cue the pumpkins! Halloween is just around the corner, and it’s time to embrace the spooky spirit to keep those early finishers engaged with fun educational activities, so they don’t turn into classroom management nightmares. If you’re looking for Halloween early finisher ideas to keep your upper elementary students busy and learning during this festive season, you’ve come to the right place!
Here are 8 Halloween early finisher ideas that are frightfully fun:
Halloween Math Puzzles:
Grab this free download and provide students with these Halloween-themed math puzzles that incorporate addition, subtraction, multiplication, and number sense. These puzzles challenge critical thinking and problem-solving skills while adding a spooky twist.
Halloween Early Finisher Editing Challenge:
Set up a grammar station where early finishers design grammar challenges for each other by writing a story about a haunted house that purposely has several grammar and spelling mistakes for their partner to find and correct. Students can practice editing and revising while getting into the Halloween spirit. If your Halloween early finishers don’t have enough time for a whole story, they can work on one sentence at a time with these fix the sentence task cards.
Pumpkin Multiplication Review:
Stock a math station with a few simple supplies and the instructions for this cute pumpkin-themed multiplication review. It comes in a version just for basic multiplication facts as well as a 2-digit by 1-digit multiplication practice.
Creepy Data Collection:
Little Halloween trinkets like spiders, plastic pumpkins, and eyeballs make great math manipulatives. Fill a bucket with a whole bunch of these creepy counting objects and challenge your early finishers to use them to create data charts of their own design. Maybe it’s a pictograph of each type of object. Maybe they close their eyes, choose an object and plot the result on a line plot graph to analyze the probability of one object being chosen over the others.
Task Card Trick or Treating
Choose your favorite set of Halloween-themed task cards or find a set of cards to target a skill that needs extra practice this time of year. Hang the cards around the room and place a small plastic pumpkin or Halloween-themed cup under each task card filled with a Halloween sticker or small piece of candy. After students complete each card they can trick-or-treat from the container under each card.
Witch’s Brew Creative Writing Prompt:
Encourage students to let their imaginations run wild with a creative writing prompt about concocting a witch’s brew. Ask them to describe the ingredients, the brewing process, and the effects of the potion by using creepy adjectives to improve their storytelling skills.
Haunted House Math Craft:
Provide students with the supplies and instructions to create this fun haunted house math craft and practice partial product multiplication at the same time.
Candy Corn Creative Writing Prompts:
Provide students with creative writing prompts inspired by candy corn, such as “Write a story about a magical candy corn that grants wishes” or “Describe a spooky adventure involving a haunted candy corn factory.” Encourage your Halloween early finishers to let their creativity flow while practicing their writing skills.
I hope these Halloween early finisher ideas keep your students engaged and learning during the spookiest time of the year! Enjoy!