If your schedule is anything like mine has been lately, you want to walk into October with your teaching materials as planned as possible 🙂 Your students will be thrilled at the prospect of anything Halloween related showing up in their lessons, but it doesn’t have to be complicated! Below you’ll find my favorites for encouraging music involvement at home, worksheets and activities, and Halloween books all to make your planning life easier 🙂
Encouraging a Musical Home Environment –
Last year’s Pumpkin Racing Worksheets –
DIY Spider Rhythms –
Materials Needed: Black Cardstock, Googly Eyes, Elmer’s Glue, Metallic Sharpie, Black Sharpie, Clothespins, Scissors
1- Cut the spider bodies out of black cardstock.
2- Glue googly eyes to each spider head.
3- Write a number (to represent an amount of beats) on each spider body with metallic sharpie.
4- Use a fine point black sharpie to draw rhythms on clothespins.
5- Once finished, have students match each clothespin to the spider body that has the number matching the amount of beats on the clothespin.
6- For a more game-based aspect, time your student. Have them complete the activity twice and see if they can beat their time the second time around 🙂
Teach Piano Today – has a fantastic lineup of Halloween activities that are low/no prep and engaging for both students and teachers. My studio’s favorite? Their Halloween improvisation pack! With spooky sounds and friendly rhythms, your students will love creating their own music on the spot 🙂 You can check it out here.
Build-A-Skeleton Interval Challenge – The original idea came from pianimation.com. The link contains interval cards (I printed them in black and white on purple and orange cardstock), and a link for a printable skeleton. I modify it for one person, and time my students to see how fast they can identify intervals and put the skeleton together (two bones added for a second, three for a third interval, etc.).
Halloween Music –
Mummy Rocks the Costume Contest – Your students will love this! All songs are composed in Middle C position, in 3/4 or 4/4 time, and include steps and skips. Fun and engaging note reading activities are included!
Strange Sounds – Perfect for Halloween, but fun and educational music to play any time of the year 🙂
Halloween Spooktacular – All the spooky themes you can think of in P/V/G format 🙂
Do you have favorite Halloween activities you’ll be adding to your lesson plans this month? I’d love to hear about them 🙂
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