If there is one quintessential symbol for Halloween, it's the pumpkin. Bring a few pumpkins to school and you can develop days' worth of math lesson plans. Divide your class into groups if you cannot purchase one pumpkin for each student. Have students estimate their pumpkin's weight and then check their estimates against a scale's measurement. Have students measure the pumpkin's circumference. Ask the class to estimate the number of seeds the pumpkins hold. Arrange for parent volunteers to help cut the pumpkins open so the students dig in and count their seeds. Review polygons by having the students design their jack-o-lantern's faces with measurements and markers. Pumpkin math activities are appropriate for any elementary-aged classroom.
One of the reasons children get so excited about Halloween is the mountains of candy they receive while trick-or-treating. Give your students a head start on their candy collection and weave in a little math at the same time. Making a candy graph helps elementary-aged children review their data collecting skills, and can motivate them to apply this knowledge in a new way. Pass out graph paper and a package of colorful candies to each student. Have the students label the graph across the horizontal, or x-axis, with the names of the colors they see in the package. Then, have the students make the vertical, or y-axis, so they can plot the number of colored candies; instruct students to color in one block for each color in their candy packages. For an additional challenge, tell students to use their graphs to determine how many candy pieces they have in all, which colors are most and least represented, and what the average number of colored candy pieces is in the whole class.
Reviewing multiplication can be a drag for many upper elementary students. Reinvigorate your class with a Halloween multiplication review game. Have your class stand facing each other in a circle. Hold a ball of black yarn in one hand, and the end of the yarn in the other. Call out a multiplication fact. Toss the yarn to a student while holding the end piece in your hand. Instruct that student to call out the correct answer and a new multiplication fact. She will then throw the yarn ball to another student, while holding the end of the yarn in her other hand. Continue until every student has called out a multiplication fact and the class has created a spider web.
Use Halloween excitement to motivate your students to practice the concept of multiples while counting. Have your class sit in a circle. The student who starts begins counting at one. Instruct the students to continue counting until one student reaches seven. Instead of saying seven, instruct this student to say a spooky Halloween word of your choice. Have the counting continue around the circle until a student reaches the next multiple of seven. Again, the student must say the designated word. Determine how high the students will count. When they reach that number, start the counting over with a new number at which to substitute your spooky word.