This post may contain affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase after clicking a link, we may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Welcome to our “Spooktacular Stories Week” – a collection of days filled with relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to the spooky stories! Perfect for Halloween, late night camp fires, or just plain old spooky fun, this week is perfect for keeping little ones entertained and learning while they enjoy some not-too-scary days devoted to some ghost stories! We kicked off the series by learning all about what spooky stories are (compared to other stories). Read on to check out a fun filled day of learning, reading, crafts, and activities all on spooky stories!
GREAT RESOURCES
- Teach Your Students How To Write a Scary Story by Keep ‘em Thinking
- Thrills! Chills! Using Scary Stories to Motivate Students to Read by Read Write Think
- Teaching the Epic through Ghost Stories by Read Write Think
- The Skeleton of a Scary Story by The Kennedy Center
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week! If they’re incredibly crafty and creative, having some extra and opened-ended crafts would be great to keep them engaged. Otherwise, a prepared activity would work well!
Bring out the Halloween decorations, set up some tents and bring out some flashlights, ghost story candles, or just turn down the lights!
To add some spooky, nighttime story vibes, we set up a black table cover and hung up a dark, navy blue one. Then we added some black tree decorations and created a hand-painted moon (out of a paper plate and paint). And we brought out some spooky Halloween crafts – Halloween Night Sticker Sheets, plastic spiders, DIY paper ghosts, and more! We added to the decorations as week went on!
WEEKLONG PROJECT
At the start of the week, we also introduce a weeklong project – this is great for reinforcing concepts learned throughout the day as well as allowing them to build time and project management skills.
For our weeklong project, we had them write a spooky short story with all the elements they learned about throughout the week!
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). There are TONS of cool sharks out there and one short video can’t possibly list them all, but here are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
- (How to Make Your Writing Successful) in The Skeleton of a Scary Story by The Kennedy Center. Note: There are some other really great videos in here to go along with the info in the article!
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!
For our snack of the day, we made some ready to bake ghost cookies, but if you have the time there are tons of ghost themed snacks that would be fun to make together!
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:
- A World Full of Spooky Stories: 50 Tales to Make Your Spine Tingle by Angela McAllister (Author), Madalina Andronic (Illustrator)
- Ghost Stories for Kids Age 9 – 12: Short Spooky and Scary Horror Stories to Tell at a Campfire, Halloween, or Whenever It Gets Dark by Bernard Tate
Since these are longer books and early chapter books, we crafted some Halloween Friends Paper Bookmarks to use for our reading time!
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: GHOST, SPOOKY, STORIES
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 but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- Party in the house – haunted house that is! Write a short story about a ghost throwing a Halloween party for the first time. The party is off to a great start but then, a few kids show up on a dare. What happens???
- Take the scariest story you’ve ever heard and turn it into a comedy! (What things did you change to make the story less scary?)
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!
For our STEM Activity, we picked up a Haunted House Building Set. Although it wasn’t the popular brand of building blocks, this was still a great build (instructions a bit harder to read than Legos), but still great to put together!
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for checking out our ghost story week! 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 other days in our Spooktacular Stories Week, Halloween Week, or Halloween Ideas!
Happy Learning & Happy Halloween!
MORE SPOOKTACULAR FUN:
Trick or Treat: It’s Halloween Week!
15+ Family Friendly Halloween Parties!
