Halloween Wheel

Five Halloween wheels

Pick a list in What's on the wheel, or edit any of them first:

• Costume ideas for the "what are you going to be?" question, a week before the shops run out.
• Party games for a classroom party or a living-room one, with nothing to eat and little to buy.
• Trick or treat for turns at a party: every spin is either a silly challenge or a small treat that is not candy.
• Spooky story starters for writing time, more mysterious than frightening.
• Candy bag (math) for a lesson on chance: 20 pretend pieces, one slice each, and nothing to eat.

Everything on the five lists is meant for children as well as adults: no gore, no jump scares, no characters you would need a licence to dress up as. To put a wheel on every student's screen, Send this wheel posts it to Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams; a sent wheel holds up to 40 entries, so each of these lists fits.

The lists on this wheel

Costume ideas

Sixteen costumes most families can put together from what is already at home.

• Witch or wizard
• Friendly ghost
• Pirate
• Astronaut
• Black cat
• Mummy
• Vampire
• Scarecrow
• Robot
• Skeleton
• Dinosaur
• Mad scientist
• Pumpkin
• Bat
• Your own superhero
• Firefighter

Party games

Sixteen games for a classroom or living-room party, with no food and little to buy.

• Mummy wrap race
• Pumpkin bowling
• Pass the pumpkin
• Halloween charades
• Witch hat ring toss
• Monster freeze dance
• Spooky Simon says
• Pin the face on the pumpkin
• Spider web walk
• Costume parade
• Halloween bingo
• Skeleton scavenger hunt
• Guess the jar count
• Ghost in the graveyard
• Monster drawing relay
• Haunted hot potato

Trick or treat

Sixteen spins, half silly tricks and half treats that are not food.

• Trick: howl like a werewolf
• Treat: pick a sticker
• Trick: walk like a zombie to the door
• Treat: choose the next song
• Trick: tell a Halloween joke
• Treat: first in line
• Trick: tongue twister three times
• Treat: one minute of free time
• Trick: freeze like a statue for 10 seconds
• Treat: pick the next game
• Trick: best witch cackle
• Treat: a Halloween pencil
• Trick: spooky dance move
• Treat: sit anywhere for the next activity
• Trick: speak like a robot for a minute
• Treat: a high five from everyone

Spooky story starters

Sixteen first lines for a short story: more mysterious than scary.

• The pumpkin on our porch began to glow…
• A friendly ghost moved into the school library…
• The last house on the street gave out something strange…
• My costume would not come off…
• Every jack-o'-lantern on the street turned to look at me…
• The candy bag felt heavier on the way home…
• A black cat left a note on our doorstep…
• The haunted house was afraid of us…
• At midnight, the scarecrow asked me for directions…
• My shadow went trick-or-treating without me…
• An old map led to the pumpkin patch…
• The witch's broom needed a new driver…
• The skeleton in the science room started to dance…
• Someone kept leaving candy corn on my desk…
• The moon turned orange, and the streetlights started whispering…
• Our class pet wore a costume that nobody had made…

Candy bag (math)

A pretend bag of 20 pieces in 8 kinds, some much rarer than others, for a math lesson on chance. No real candy is needed: each spin is one house.

• Chocolate bar
• Lollipop
• Gummy bears
• Caramel
• Chocolate bar
• Sour chews
• Lollipop
• Toffee
• Chocolate bar
• Gummy bears
• Mints
• Lollipop
• Chocolate bar
• Caramel
• Sour chews
• Gummy bears
• Chocolate bar
• Toffee
• Lollipop
• Candy corn

Costume ideas: spin early

Spin in the first half of October, not the night before. Most of the sixteen can be made from clothes, cardboard and face paint, but even a mummy needs a few rolls of something.

• Spin three times and choose. The wheel gives you options; it does not have to give you orders.
• Edit the list together. Delete anything your child would never wear and add their own ideas before spinning, so every slice is one they would be happy with.
• For a group or a family theme, spin once for the theme and then use the random team generator to decide who is which character.

A classroom party that runs itself

A Halloween party goes better with a plan, and the wheel can be the plan.

1. Put the Party games list on the board with Fullscreen.
2. Turn on Remove the winner after each spin, so no game comes up twice in one afternoon.
3. Split the class into groups with the random team generator for the relay and charades rounds.
4. Use the Trick or treat list between games, with the random student picker choosing who spins.

Fifteen to twenty minutes per game is about right; four or five games fill a party. Check your school's rules first: many schools limit food at parties, ask for non-food rewards, or have their own guidance on costumes.

Treats that are not candy

Half of the Trick or treat list is treats, and none of them is food. That is deliberate. Some children have food allergies, some follow diets for health or faith, and many schools ask for non-food rewards. A treat like choosing the next song, being first in line or a Halloween pencil works for everyone in the room.

The tricks are small on purpose too: a howl, a joke, a ten-second statue. Nothing that singles someone out or that a shy child would dread. If your group is younger, delete the tongue twister; if it is older, add your own harder challenges.

Trick-or-treat math with the candy bag

The Candy bag (math) list is a pretend bag of 20 pieces in 8 kinds. Each piece is one slice, so a kind with more pieces has more slices and comes up more often, just as it would from a real bag. Nobody eats anything.

1. Choose Candy bag (math) in What's on the wheel and leave Remove the winner after each spin off: the bowl at each door does not run out.
2. Ask the class to guess: how many houses until the bag has given every kind at least once?
3. Spin once per house and tally each kind on the board. Stop when every kind has a mark.
4. Compare the class's count with the guesses, then run it again, or let pairs run their own and pool their tallies.

Most guesses are far too low, and the rare kinds are the reason. How many houses until you have every kind of candy? works out the odds for this exact bag.

Spooky story starters for writing time

Each starter is the first line of a story and stops just before anything happens. Spin one for the whole class, or let each student spin their own.

• Ten minutes of writing, then a few volunteers read the first paragraph aloud.
• Pass the story: each student writes three sentences, then passes the page to a neighbor who continues.
• Draw it first: younger students draw the scene, then tell the story out loud.

The starters are mysterious rather than frightening, so they suit most ages. Remove any that do not suit yours.

If your class does not celebrate Halloween

Not every family celebrates Halloween, and some schools hold a fall festival instead. The wheel adapts in a minute: delete the costume list, rename the party games ("pass the pumpkin" is a fall game too), and keep the story starters that are about autumn rather than ghosts.

The random activity picker and the classroom jobs, brain breaks and questions wheel have lists that work in any season.