Use these virtual Halloween party ideas for classrooms so you can have Halloween fun on your class Zoom calls or during a socially distanced in-person classroom setting.
Halloween is fast approaching, but this year, as with all things, it will look different.
We can’t have the super cute Halloween costume parties with all the games and Halloween themed foods in our classrooms this year.
Our kids might not be able to have the costume parades or pumpkin decoration contests or our fabulous Halloween Carnivals like we’ve done in past years.
We love celebrating Halloween in our classrooms with our spider science unit and our Halloween print and craft activity and our candy corn initial sounds game.
And while this year is definitely a weird one, we can still make Halloween special and fun for our students. Even if we celebrate Halloween with them virtually.
Virtual Halloween Party Celebration Ideas
Even if we’re teaching virtually this year, we can still connect with our students and celebrate Halloween.
We just need to get a little creative and put some twists on ideas we’ve used in the past and make them work for us this year.
Spend the school day before Halloween and carve out time in your day for your class party. And use these ideas, or a combination of these ideas to make the celebration work for you and your students.
1.Wear Costumes and Have a Contest
Kids can still dress up for Halloween, even if they’re not going anywhere…and this year they can wear masks! Encourage your students to wear a costume to your Zoom call and make sure to wear one yourself.
Remind students that if they don’t have a costume, they can wear anything silly they want. Or you can encourage kids to find things around their house to dress up as their favorite book character.
Students can share what they’re wearing and you can “award” certificates to your students like Most Creative, Most Colorful, Silliest, and Scariest.
Or we saw this fun costume idea on social media… Have students wear their costumes to the zoom call, but turn their cameras off. Then each student gives three clues so classmates can guess what they dressed up as. Once the guess is correct, the student turns on their camera to show off their costume.
2. Freeze Dance
Get your students up and moving with a freeze dance contest where no one gets “out.” You can use music like Monster Mash, Ghostbusters, Purple People Eater. Get a whole list of kid-friendly Halloween music here. It’s a perfect virtual Halloween party idea!
3. Play Halloween Bingo
Students love Bingo and this Halloween Bingo Game will be a sure hit. You can print out the cards and send them out during a school pick up or email the pdf to parents and have them print out one card.
For markers to cover up the spaces, students can use pennies or cereal or anything small from home.
The student to get 5 in a row and call out Bingo first wins…maybe they get to pick the next spirit day theme? Or you send them some stickers? Or they get to choose the story you read next.
4. Play Jack-o-Lantern (an updated version of Hangman)
Instead of Hangman, build a Jack-o-Lantern as the students guess the letters to a Halloween-themed word. With every letter they guess incorrectly, you draw a piece of the jack-o-lantern: the body, the stem, each eye, the nose, the mouth, the eyebrows, etc.
5. Play Charades
Act out Halloween activities like trick or treating or a witch making potions or Dracula turning into a bat.
You can do all the acting out or you can “assign” students to act it out during the Zoom call party.
6. Halloween Art
Do a directed drawing lesson to show your students step by step how to draw Halloween items that might feel too hard for them to draw on their own. But step by step, if you show them how, they’ll be successful.
Not feeling super creative yourself? There are tons of free directed drawing tutorials on Youtube you can show them, or use them to teach yourself so you can lead the directed drawing without the video.
Or you can use a classic, Ed Emberley’s Monster Book to show them step by step how to draw.
7. Read Halloween Books
Halloween books are always a hit to read… Here are my top 12 Halloween books if you’re looking to spice up the Halloween books in your classroom library.
For a Halloween party, Big Pumpkin is always a big hit because instead of reading it, you can sing it and watch the video. It’s one of our faves!
8. Scavenger Hunt
Send your students on a Halloween-themed scavenger hunt through their house to find things one at a time like:
- something orange
- something black
- something spooky
- something sweet
- a Halloween decoration
9. Estimation Jar
Hold up a jar filled with candy or plastic spiders or bats and have the studetns guess how many are in the jar. They can write their guess in a private message to you or they can write it down on a piece of paper.
To help them guess more appropriate math estimates, you can show them what 10 of the items look like in a separate jar so their estimates aren’t quite so random or far off.
10. Create a Class Spooky Story
Tell a story together as a class Mad Lib Style!
To create it, write a Halloween themed story about a spooky, haunted house or trick or treating or a Monster party and leave out certain words. Then just like Mad Libs, have students choose words to finish the story. Then read the story out loud.
It’ll probably be way sillier than spooky.
11. Make Monsters
Send home these Make a Monster kits with mini Play-dohs to your students and give them time to create their most fabulous monsters possible.
If you want to sneak in a little learning with this activity, they can write a sentence or a story about their monster or tell the class a story about their monster. Or, you can call it a party and just make the monsters for loads for fun.
12. 20 Questions
Pick a Halloween themed item in your head like a jack-o-lantern, a witch, a skeleton, a bat, etc. and have your students try to guess what you’re thinking of by asking questions.
Remind them to ask things like, “Are you an animal?” “Can you eat it?” “Can you wear it?” “Is it real or imaginary?”
The winner can be the next person to choose a Halloween themed item to answer the questions.
13. Pumpkin Decoration Content/Show and Tell
Students can still decorate pumpkins with their families at home and then show them off. They can explain what they carved and why they chose it. And they can share the name of their pumpkin if they have one.
Just make sure to communicate clearly to parents if you chose to do this so their student has a prepared jack-o-lantern for the party so they don’t accidentally miss out.
14. Zoom In on your Zoom Call
Take advantage of the screen between you and your students and take a Halloween item and zoom in really close on it and see if your students can guess what it really is. Try spider legs and witch fingers and a plastic bat.
However you celebrate Halloween with your students, I’m sure you’ll make it amazing…even if it’s different than how you would celebrate if they were sitting in the same room as them.
A virtual Halloween party may be different…but it can still be special and fun.
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