October Activities for Elementary Students
October is one of the best months to be in an elementary classroom. Students are settled into routines, the weather is changing, and there is no shortage of seasonal content to work with — animals, space, measurement, writing, crafts, and science all have natural October connections.
This list covers the October activities I come back to every year, organized by category so you can find what fits your class.
Elementary students have a massive range of interests during October. This incredible list of October activities ensures there is something exciting for everyone!
Craftivities for the Season
Students love to use their creativity! Students can only sit at a desk for so long. They need time to express themselves in other ways.
The Real Me Halloween Craftivity allows students to focus on who they are. While dressing up is fun, students must stay true to themselves. This craft allows them to do exactly that!
There can be so much laughter during the fall season with everything there is to do. However, it can also be lonely.
The Halloween Kindness Treat Bag allows students to focus on treating others. Instead of candy, they will do this through kindness activities. To help students see the impact of kindness, they will reflect on their lives. This includes thinking back to times someone showed them kindness and times they showed someone kindness. Students will have all the treats they need when they have supportive people!
Teach about Animals during October
Students love animals! Whenever teachers can incorporate them, student interest soars. Now, the Halloween Animal Articles do not focus on just any animals. They focus on spooky bats, creepy, crawling spiders, howling owls, and many more! Articles include vocabulary, graphic organizers, comprehension activities, and writing pages.
One of my favorite writing activities is All About Bats! Students research this spooky animal and write a paragraph all about bat facts! Students read about bats using informational articles and videos. I have students share the facts they learned, then we use a graphic organizer before moving into writing.
October Writing Prompts
October gives students a lot to write about. Spooky settings, favorite fall traditions, what they would do with a magic pumpkin, persuasive pieces about whether Halloween candy should be rationed — the seasonal context makes writing feel less abstract.
I have 60 Halloween writing prompts organized by genre—narrative, opinion, informational, and creative. Sorting prompts by genre makes it easy to connect October writing to whatever unit is already underway, rather than stopping everything for a seasonal detour.
A few of my students’ favorites: writing from the perspective of a jack-o’-lantern the night after Halloween, arguing whether trick-or-treating should have an age limit, and describing their ideal haunted house using sensory details.
October Stories Students Love
Similar to animals, stories love to listen to stories. Whether they are about pumpkins, black cats, or monsters, there is something so special about listening to a book or poem. The QR Code Halloween Stories and Favorite October Books have so many incredible ideas! With the QR Code options, students can even listen to a story of their own choice. After all, there is only one of me for over 20 students!
Here is a list of my favorite books to read during October.
Hands-on Learning October Activities
Students cannot just sit at their desks all day. They need to explore content and manipulate objects. Fall is the perfect time to bring in festive activities! For instance, the Pumpkin Measurement Activity allows students to learn all about measurement! You can even add a carving station where students count the seeds inside! Students can even complete Halloween Science Activities to learn about the scientific method. Many fun activities include vanishing ghosts and apple volcanoes!
October Science Experiments
October is one of the best months for science. Students are curious, the season gives you natural phenomena to investigate (falling leaves, changing temperatures, moon visibility), and there is no shortage of materials to work with.
I have a full list of Halloween science experiments that cover physical science, chemistry, and earth science using seasonal materials. Vanishing ghosts, apple volcanoes, pumpkin eruptions, density towers with candy corn — each activity connects to a real science concept so the October theme doesn’t come at the expense of content.
These work well as stations, as a Friday experiment, or spread across October—one or two at a time rather than all at once.
30 different ideas you can use to teach your students about science phenomena.
Moon Study Science Exploration during October
October is a good time to start a moon study. The moon rises earlier in the evening in fall, so students can observe it from home without staying up late. I have students record the phase they saw the night before and bring their observations to class each morning.
The Moon Phase Study walks students through moon rotation and revolution with built-in support and recording pages. If your class is ready to go deeper, the Movement of the Earth unit connects how Earth’s movement creates both the day/night cycle and the changing seasons.
Halloween escape room
October is all about learning about bats in our classroom. And of course, Creepy Pair of Underwear is a must.
Scooby Doo escape room
Mystery Science skeletons, pumpkin catapults, Bat wing STEM challenge, Halloween celebration with stations
We do pumpkin volcanos, painting pumpkins, carving pumpkins, comparing and contrasting pumpkins, a candy experiment, field trip to the pumpkin patch and corn maze, history of how Halloween came to be, and we go over safety tips to keep them safe while they are out trick or treating, build scarecrows, and we also go over the reason that our family celebrates Dia De Los Muertos and the steps of setting up everything and doing all of the decorations together to remember and celebrate our loved ones that have past, and we compare all of our holidays to each other and discuss which two holidays do we think are alike in different ways such as which two holidays does it take us the most time to prepare for, which holidays are the easiest ones that we prepare for, which ones do we decorate more for, and so forth.
We work on our energy unit, so energy types, circuits, light (refraction and reflection). I love using bats and echolocation to teach sound energy. We adopt a bat from BatWorld. 🙂
My favorite activity we do in the month of October is our pumpkin investigation unit! We estimate, weigh our pumpkin, float it, clean it out and count the seeds!
Pumpkin activities
Pumpkin/Fall activities
We do Fall activities and spend time outside looking at the changes in seasons and how animals adapt to the seasons, focus on Thanksgiving being Canadian it’s now in October.
We do cursive skeletons, a class combined drawing, some fun math worksheets, and an opinion piece about what makes them “batty”.
I do a stem pumpkin day where they do all sorts of measuring etc then they estimate how many seeds and we open the pumpkins up and count all the seeds! Our superintendent comes to help. There are also so many wonderful books to read during this month that lend to creative writing…my favorite is I Need My Monster.
I incorporate anything Halloween themed into the current curriculum for the month of October and then the week of Halloween we do lots of fun activities including STEM challenges, a Halloween parade and party
We do Thanksgiving, Fall, and Halloween themed art projects.
Just a 30 minute Halloween party. I’m not a very fun teacher.
Making flapjacks in class to go along with our tall tales unit. Kids can dress up as characters such as Paul Bunyan.
We practice our text formatting skills and make strips to put together for a pumpkin, one grade designs a haunted house and writes a real estate listing for it. Some grades do a Digital breakout. I have the K design a picture and print it out on puzzle piece paper.
Pumpkins, apples, and anything fall.
Unfortunately, we do not celebrate Halloween at our school, so it is regular old classroom activities for us!
We do our study of the horror genre in ELA, the stories and videos keep the students interested.
I work at an Airforce school so we do International Space Week where children make projects and posters space themed. We are a Muslim country so we do have some Muslims celebration coming over like Rabbi ul Awal.
This month we will focus on recycling as well
Pumpkins, bats, owls, nocturnal animals, all things fall
ALL THINGS Fall! and Halloween lol
I am an elementary SLP, so I use themes each week for my sessions. For October, I use bats, pumpkins, owls, and Halloween. Some of my favorite books to use are Room on the Broom, Pumpkin Jack, Crankenstein, Big Pumpkin, and Spookley the Square Pumpkin.
We have “Freaky Friday”. This is a center based Halloween party. The centers include decorating pumpkins, stacking ghosts (white cups), an obstacle course, sweeping pumpkins, a hayride etc.
Hispanic Heritage month, and PBIS Fall Fest.