This free ESL in China! Halloween Games Pack was put together for English teachers and schools who have a Halloween Party coming up this October. Inside this pack you will find a large selection of spooky activities and games which you can use in your school. Hopefully, it will be your one-stop go-to each year when Halloween comes around! Please feel free to save it on your office computer or print it out to put it in a folder for your bookshelves. Please share this pack. The activities in this pack were submitted by ESL in China! members, a couple from me, and some more I found online. A big thank you to all contributors! If you like these activities and feel it will help other schools or teachers, then please do email it to others. Finally, if you have WeChat on your phone, then scan the QR code in this pack to join ESL in China!. You ll receive free games and activities directly to your phone every few days. Give it a try now it s the best thing you ll do all week! Stuart Allen ESL in China!
Halloween Fashion Show Have your students come to the party in Halloween Costumes and then have a Halloween Fashion Parade or fancy dress competition. If you think your students or their parents won t be able to find something to wear, then you can have a hat making or mask making activity in your party and then have your parade or competition this way. Submitted by Fiona Wang, Rise English, Shenyang Making Halloween Posters Get A3 or A2 poster paper, some pre-cut templates to stick on, some poster paint and some brushes. The kids make their own Halloween posters! The students can then take these home or they can be used to make an attractive school display.
Field trip to a pumpkin farm When I was living and teaching in China, we organized a bus to take the students out to a pumpkin farm. The students had a tour around and then everyone got the chance to carve their own pumpkin. It was a really fun thing to do! Both submitted by Calvin, Humboldt State University, USA Giant Snakes and Ladders At our school, we have made a GIANT Snakes and Ladders board. Instead of a token, students actually stand on the board and climb ladders and slide down the snakes! We ll give out sweets to the winning teams! From Dan Withey, EF English First Xuzhou
Face Painting Go online to find 3-4 simple Halloween face painting designs. Get yourself some face paints, either from shops or online, and then have a practice on another teacher. The night of the party, students can go to the face painting area and choose one of the four designs. The parents will love seeing their kids in Halloween face paint! From Ann, King s International English, Wenzhou Describing Monsters I made a lesson about monsters. First I pre-taught some vocabulary about body parts that monsters can have (wings, tail, horns, etc) - they played a game matching the words to pictures. Then I put students in pairs, and give one partner a picture of some kind of monster/dragon/etc (I searched for pictures online), they must describe it and their partner draws it. For the last activity, students draw their own monster and then present it to the class. By Stephanie Cockrell, Shanghai
Candlelight Ghost Stories Make one of your classes dark and illuminated by candlelight. Then download a short ghost story and tell it to your students in a really spooky way. Put lots of passion into your reading. If your students are too low-level and you have a Teaching Assistant to translate, then make sure you go through the story with your TA first so there will be no translation trouble. Keep the story going smoothly and scarily! If you feel that having a naked flame is too risky, then a torch or flashlight will do just as well. Submitted by Sherry Liu, World International English, Qingdao Witches Hat Ring Toss Get a giant board (as shown), and then make five witches hats from black card or thick paper. Put the students into teams and then have them throw hoops over the witch s hats. The team with most rings over the hats wins!
Scary Halloween Corners This random Halloween game is always a lot of fun for kids and it is totally random who the winner is. Stick up large Halloween themed pictures (i.e. witch, bat, ghost and black cat) in the four corners of a room. Play some music and when it stops, each child runs to a corner (if you have small numbers you can limit the number of children in each). The music operator without looking then calls out one corner or pulls a piece of paper from a hat and the image on the paper identifies which the corner is out of the game. Continue to play until there is one person left and they win a prize. Pin the Face on the Pumpkin This is a different take on the classic of pin the tail on the donkey. Blindfolded students can either pin parts of the face on the pumpkin or a whole face for younger children.
Don t Fall on the Spiders! Print and cut out some spiders, or better still make these paper cups and black straws, a load of man-eating terror spiders! Students then have to cross over without toppling off into the pit of spiders! Mummy Wrap Put your students into teams. Each team is given a toilet roll, and on the whistle, must wrap one of their team members in the toilet roll until it s all gone. The team which uses up their roll first is the winner! All of the person s body must be wrapped up, legs, arms, body, everything! Leave the head unless you want a real mummy on your hands!
Halloween Musical chairs Let s say you have a group of 10 students, arrange 9 chairs (yes, one chair less) back to back in a line. Your students then walk around the chairs while you play some cool or spooky music. As soon as you pause the music, the student who has no chair is out and must stand to one side. Take one chair out, so again there is one less chair. Keep going again until there is only one winner left. Submitted by Fish Halloween Movies There are a number of great Halloween movies out there for older children and adults. You could play these at the front front desk, parent waiting area or as an activity. Some good choices are Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice and Hocus Pocus for older teens and adults. The Gruffolo, Casper and Monster, Inc for younger kids. Calvin, Humbolt State University, USA
Letter find Print out some large letters (there are some great Halloween theme letters online), laminate them and hide them around the school. Students then come back and try to make words in the classroom. From Sandy Huang, Sunbo School, Shenyang Halloween Who am I? This is good for older teens or adults, or those at a slightly higher language level. Pre-teach some Halloween characters such as witch, mummy, ghost, etc. Then stick a mini flashcard of one of the characters on the forehead of each student. They must now ask questions to the teacher or each other to guess who they are. By Ms. WenNiBi (from the Philippines), who is teaching in Zhenzhou
Thriller Dance Download the video for Michael Jackson s Thriller and show the students. Then get the students to perform the dance, they love it! Murder Mystery This is for older students. Have a room where on the floor there is a body outline and tell the students there has been a terrible crime. Leave clues around the school and students have to solve the mystery. There are a bunch of murder mystery cards and clues online. Both submitted by Ann Yang, Kings International English, Wenzhou
Making Spiders They are easy to do. Just use a paper cup as the body, (upside down) and stick 8 short pieces of string on as the legs. You can put string at the top so that you can suspend your spider. They bounced as well (which the kids loved!). Then just stick eyes on and decorate. Very simple and not too messy. Submitted by Holly Edlin, Istra, Russia
Trick or Treat Put students into groups of five or six. Tell them they need to choose something scary to act out and the class will need to guess what they are. You probably will have to teach some vocab before this activity. They could be something like a witch casting a spell or a vampire biting someone and they can choose to be different things or act out something as a whole group. Then each group must go out of the class one by one and knock on the door saying "trick or treat." When they enter the class they need to act out their scary thing. If the class can guess what they are/what is happening, they get some candy. If the class doesn t know, then the group needs to answer an English question of your choice, depending on what you have been doing in classes. (For example, what time did you wake up this morning? How did you come to school today? Tell me three adjectives about your mum.) Or you could ask a Halloween question. From Elida Benjamin, Web English, Xi an
Coloured Cone Hats Make cone shape caps from embossed coloured paper or thick coloured card. Then print out funny pictures like cartoon to make them funny. Elastic string is tied on both sides' and the chin holds to place not to fall off. From Maureen Mandala, Huayuan Middle School, Hunan Apple bobbing This is a Halloween Classic, so there is some western culture in this game for sure! Fill up a large, plastic washing bowl with water and then put a load of apples in the water (they will float). Students then have to take out an apple using their teeth with the hands behind their back! Have dry towels ready! Submitted by Michael Oles, Shanxi Experimental Secondary School, Taiyuan
Boo Bowling A fun game for young kids is Boo Bowling. This involves wrapping paper towel rolls as ghosts and rolling the roundest pumpkin towards them in an effort to knock down your ghostly pins. For older kids, keep score and see who does the best. Halloween Bingo Bingo is a good way to keep kids entertained, with the promise of candy if you win, and many places sell pre-made Halloween themed bingo cards for easy set up, or easy to download. Remember to pre-teach the vocab first!
Pop the Pumpkin Another great game is Pop the Pumpkin, is a lot of fun. Get a load of containers and stretch orange tissue paper over the top and fix with a rubber band. Then make the mega pumpkin as shown. Blindfold a child and let them go until they pop a pumpkin. This goes until all pumpkins are gone. This game gets tricky when there s only one or two left. You can put a few sweets or toys on random ones to build the excitement. Halloween Cookie Making This is a good activity if teachers have portable electric ovens at home. Cookies are easy to make and are created in batches, and you can make these in any shape imaginable. Pumpkins, witch hats, ghosts, and tombstones are very popular choices for sugar cookies, with frosting to decorate. You can even let the children decorate the cookies themselves!
Halloween Treat Boxes These are really simple to make and will add a nice finishing touch to your Halloween Party. Give these out and the end of the night and let the kids take home a few goodies to remember the evening. Halloween Points in the Pumpkin Get a large cardboard box and cover it with black card or paper. Next make pumpkins with orange card and stick over the top exactly like above. Finally cut out the mouths with a craft knife or scissors and you are good to go. Students take turns to throw bean bags though the mounts of the pumpkins. 1 point for the largest hole, 2 points for the middle one, and 3 points for the top hole.
Pin the spider with directions Make sure the students understand up, down, left and right. Then blindfold a student and people direct the placer to try to put the spider right in the middle. Make this harder by making a 15 second time limit. The Disgusting Mystery Box Get three buckets and fill these half-full with water. Cover the top with black cloth with a hole big enough for a hand to get through. In one bucket, throw in a about ten skinless grapes or plums these are the eye balls! In the second bucket, put in some half-cooked thick noodles these are the intestines. In the final bucket, get a twisted bread stick and soak it for a while.this is a boiled bone! Students either have to guess what it is, or stick a picture of an eye ball, intestines and a bone on the right bucket.
Pumpkin Penny Pitch Carve out a pumpkin (or two, or three) and line the inside with plastic or aluminum foil. Make the top opening big. Place the pumpkins a couple feet away. Give each player ten to twenty 1 jiao coins. Every time a coin goes into the pumpkin, a piece of candy is won. Hooray!
Frankenstein Relay Create a start line and an obstacle 20 or more feet away and then divide the guests up into teams. You can have 2, 3 or more teams. Now instruct the participants that they must start at the starting line and then go around the obstacle (Pumpkins work great) and return to the start line and tag the next player so they can do the same thing. Continue this until all players have gone. The first team to complete the task wins! Sounds simple, right? Now tell them that they can't bend their knees while doing this and must walk like Frankenstein; Arms up and in more of a side to side motion. If you catch them bending their knees they have to return to the start line and go again. The later in the game you get the more kids bend their knees so keep your eyes open. What to make it harder? Add a tray and a cup of water and if they spill the water they must return to start line and start over. Funky Ghosts Decorate your classroom or make fun badges for your kids. This is a really easy craft activity needing only white, black and red paper. Simply cut out the bits as shown and stick on! Submitted by Tracy Xing, Xianyang, Shaanxi