Ok, confession time. Halloween hasn’t always been my favorite holiday. So I’ve been picky about what Halloween themed songs and activities make it into my curriculum. Today I’m going to share my favorite Halloween activities in elementary music.
Boomwhacker Videos
I love all of the Musication boomwhacker videos, but Skeleton Dance with Boomwhackers is one of my favorite Halloween activities in elementary music! The kids LOVE this song, and the dance in the middle is so cute to watch the K-2 kids do!
If you’re looking for a good upper elementary song for Boomwhackers, we enjoy In the Hall of the Mountain King, also from the Musication channel. This one does use accidentals, though. It’s a great time to teach kids about sharps and flats!
Ghostbusters (yep, another Musication video!) is a 5th grade favorite. In fact, they asked for that video on the very first day of school this year! It’s got a melody and a bass line, plus you can talk about chords. I find that these boomwhacker videos are great opportunities to talk about concepts they might see in more traditional music, but it’s in a simpler form because it doesn’t have the staff. Plus, they’re just super fun!
Halloween Rhythm Compositions
I love composition, and I’ll look for any opportunity to get the kids creating and composing! For a Halloween specific composition activity in K-2, I’ll use my Halloween composition sheets. While this is made for Google Slides, I have also printed it out and had my kids write on it (though, the boxes are small for K-1 kids.) Students will choose the rhythm they want for each beat and then put a word that matches the rhythm into the smaller box underneath. They end up with eight beats of a Halloween themed rhythm.
After they write their rhythm, I take it a step further by adding instruments! I usually use rhythm sticks because they’re quick to pass out, but drums would be fun, too! Having kids perform this on instruments for the class is a great assessment. For the standards on our district’s report cards, this checks off both a composing grade and an instrument score. Not to mention that the kids love performing for each other! Win-win!
PS- if you have kids who get nervous to perform but you want to take it as a grade, no biggie! Have that kiddo perform it for you while students are cleaning up or having a few minutes of free time on their drums. It’s great to get kids out of their comfort zones, but many also appreciate not having to stress out about performing, too.
Halloween Solfege Compositions
If you’re working on solfege with your students, you could compose a melody on staff paper using stickers! This is another favorite activity, especially for my lower elementary students. Simply give students a piece of staff paper and some stickers and let them create a melody! If you want to assess this one, you can either have them sing the solfege or you could have them play their composition on instruments!
Depending on what solfege syllables we’re working on, I give students simplified staff paper. It makes it far less overwhelming for them to have a one or two line staff rather than all five lines. If you want a free copy of these pages, you can snag your composition worksheets. There are TONS of options for both rhythmic and melodic compositions! For more ideas on using these composition worksheets, check out these posts about composition in K-2 and in 3-5.
Old Mother Witch
My favorite Halloween song to teach is Old Mother Witch. It’s the perfect song for quarter rest, and the kids love the game! To have students recognize the quarter rest, you might start by singing the song once, then singing it again for students and having them raise their hand when they hear you not sing. This song is great for preparing, presenting, or practicing quarter rests!
To play the game, you’ll want to print out a big picture of a penny. Laminate it for durability! You’ll choose one student to hide and the another student to be the witch that will find the lost penny. The witch will close his/her eyes, and the hider will put the penny somewhere in the room. When they’ve hidden the penny and sitting back down, the witch has 3 times through the song to find the penny. Then the game is like hot and cold. If the witch is far away, students will sing softly. If they’re closer, they’ll sing louder. It’s a great game to teach piano, forte, crescendo, and decrescendo!
A few rules I give the kids:
- Some of the penny has to be showing
- No hiding it in a drawer or cabinet
- You can hide it under a trash can, but not in the trash can
Let’s talk about how easy it is to extend this and add instruments, too! You could keep the steady beat with rhythm sticks or drums, playing the crescendo and decrescendo as the witch gets closer or farther from finding the penny. Or, you could transfer the melody on to xylophones and practice sol-mi.
13 Nights of Halloween
I think my first Halloween activity in elementary music was actually singing the book, “13 Nights of Halloween” and adding instruments to it! This lesson is loud, but a favorite with kindergarten and first graders!
You’ll divide 13 different instruments up between the class. You can have students share, but I always just gave every student an instrument and had doubles of several of them. Each instrument will have a number assigned to it, and when you sing that number in the book, that instrument gets to play their special part. I sing the book to the “12 Days of Christmas” tune.
Naturally, students will want to play all of the instruments. I handle that by going through the book twice (you can have a student read it the second time if you do this with second grade!) Then I have them pass the instruments in a big circle, giving them about 30 seconds of free time on a new instrument. They get to play several instruments, but it doesn’t take as long.
So there are some of my favorite Halloween activities in elementary music! Head over to Instagram and DM me (@caffeinated.j) and let me know your favorite Halloween activities or songs!
