Welcome to our “Halloween Week” – a collection of days filled with relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to the awesome holiday – Halloween! For this day, we turned our attention to the History of Halloween! Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on the origins of this spooky day!
A TYPICAL DAY
All kids are different and you can definitely vary your day with whatever works for you 🙂 Our relaxed & learning fun day kicks off with an introduction to the day’s theme. Then, we move onto videos and themed activities (reading, writing – or story telling – time, crafts, food crafts/snacks, and games or experiments). Feel free to pick and choose whatever works for you 🙂
INTRO
Depending on where you live, you may be extremely familiar with Halloween – or at least the dress up and trick or treating customs of Halloween 🙂 BUT Halloween is actually steeped in quite a bit of history and culture. For this day, we dove deeper into Halloween’s origins and found out just why we dress up in costumes and pass out candy 🙂
These resources are some great introductions 🙂
- Halloween by Britannica Kids
- History of Halloween by Woo Jr Kids Activities
- History of Halloween by Kids Reporter’s Notebook Scholastic
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- All About Halloween for Kids | 31 October | History of Halloween | Halloween Traditions | Twinkl USA by Twinkl Teaching Resources (3m)
- History of Halloween by Mr. DiMaio (7m)
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
With all the Halloween celebrations and party ideas, there are TONS of sugar snacks and healthy treats that you can put together or purchase. For our snack of the day, we went with some pumpkin treats 🙂
READING
It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:
- National Geographic Readers: Halloween by Laura Marsh (Step Into Reading)
- Why We Celebrate Halloween: A Short History by Home Hearth Press
- National Geographic Kids: Weird But True Halloween by Julie Beer
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: HISTORY, HALLOWEEN, TRADITIONS
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day (and we offered up some examples as well) but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- Which piece of Halloween history were you most surprised or interested in learning about today?
- Pick your favorite Halloween tradition & come up with your own fantastical origin story for it!
CREATE & CRAFT
If you’ve got a crafty little one, a simple craft is a great way to keep them interested in the topic. While their creative juices are flowing, you can also chat about what they’ve learned so far or ask them what else they’re excited about learning!
Our craft of the day was tied to our STEM activity. As we learned throughout the day, turnips – not pumpkins – were the original vegetable carved for Halloween. We decided to carve a turnip of our own (and also pepper and pumpkin for comparison). As we’ve never actually carved a turnip before, we turned to an internet search and found this great tutorial: How To Carve A Halloween Turnip by English Heritage (3m)
We also cut out a pumpkin from orange construction paper, added the number of days left for Halloween and created a countdown 🙂
STEM & STEAM ACTIVITIES
While crafting and writing get their creativity and imagination flowing, we also like to add in an activity that gets them thinking along the lines of science, technology, engineering, or math! These engaging activities or experiments are a great way to keep them learning!
While a good number of us may have carved a pumpkin at least once in our lives, carving a turnip may not have been as popular. So, we thought it would be a fun compare and contrast to carve a turnip as well as a mini pumpkin 🙂 AND, just to add some more data points, we added in a pepper as well (which you can stuff with rice or other goodies after).
In true scientific fashion, we wrote down some hypotheses on the carving experience as well as observations on each of the items to carve 🙂
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you so much for checking out our learning fun article!
If you did enjoy this, please let us know below or follow us on Pinterest. Also, If you’re still looking for more Halloween Learning Fun, check out our Halloween Week or Halloween Ideas!
Happy Learning & Happy Halloween!
