Halloween with Very Young Learners

Hooray, hooray. It's that time of year when every single lesson you do for a week has a Halloween theme! The good thing about Halloween is that there are loads of resources out there online for free. Dreamenglish.com has it covered when it comes to Halloween. You can find the video and book on the site here. There is also a video of the book AND a video of the dance.


Topic: Halloween

Age: 4-6

Vocabulary: eyes, nose, teeth, scary, happy halloween, pumpkin, my favourite

Procedure:

1. Ask the children in L1 who is going to a Halloween party. Let them tell you about the costumes they want to wear. Then ask them if they know what pumpkins are and why we make them (to scare away witches) I think it's worth spending some time on this to gain their interest.

2. Tell the 'My favourite pumpkin' story with the book. Then sing the song without watching the video but with actions.

3. Using some triangle and circular and cresent stencils (I make mine from thick cardboad) the children make their own pumpkin face, including the eyes, nose and teeth and colour. I give them the outline of a pumpkin to start with.

(Fast finishers could make another or do the pumpin counting worksheet on dreamenglish.com.

4. Watch the video of the this is my favourite pumpkin song and dance (or just do the hand actions if the class is big).

5. Finish the lesson by saying 'Happy Halloween!'

Extensions:

Introduce happy, sad, tired, angry and scared. Ask the children to mime the expressions and then draw pumpkins with those expressions.

Take in sweets and candy and say 'TRICK OR TREAT!'