3 No Prep Spooky Season Activities To Use In Special Education

Spooky season is upon us and it’s one of my favorite times of year! Sure, I love a PSL with the best of them but I mean I love this time even more because it’s a way to bring some added interest and joy into the classroom. Plus, it’s another opportunity to include some more real-world applications in your special education classes.

Here are three of my best tried-and-true Halloween-focused activities for special education classes.

Halloween Activity 1 – Focus on choice making

Encourage your students to make choices with would you rather activities. These can set the tone for your morning meeting or get students discussing options in small groups to develop communication skills further. 

I like setting up slides with two choices: would you rather go trick-or-treating or watch a scary movie? Then students can make their choice. You can extend the activity by asking students to explain or justify their choice. 

Grab this set of 25 slides to countdown to Halloween or infuse the season.

Halloween Activity 2 – Budget with a debit card 

Bring in consumer math activities that have real-world applications and still connect to the spooky season. 

I like to take any and every opportunity to build financial literacy in special education. One way to do this is to provide students with a pretend debit card and a budget. For example, student A has a debit card with $20 available and wants to buy a new shirt that costs $18.99. Is the balance on the debit card enough? 

Now use seasonal themes to increase the engagement with such activities. A spooky season option might indicate that Student B has $10 on a debit card but wants to buy a Halloween costume for $11.99. Is the balance on the debit card enough? 

On a slide, you can integrate an image of a debit card with its balance and a potential costume along with a price tag and voila you can share this activity with the whole class.

Another option is to grab this interactive Google Slides activity that’s perfect for a budgeting activity at Halloween! Cards 1-30 in the set show students an item and a sentence explaining how much the item costs. Students are asked to determine if they have enough money on their debit card to make the purchase.

For more ways to integrate financial literacy lessons check out this post.

Halloween Activity 3 – Using coupons

Another aspect of financial literacy that I love to include in my class is about using coupons. (This post shares 6 tips for using coupons as part of financial literacy lessons in special education.)

Combining a coupon lesson with Boom cards is a way to engage students and to make my teacher life a bit easier. This resource was designed with special education teachers in mind! These digital task cards are perfect for collecting data on IEP goals and objectives.

If you’re not familiar with BOOM Cards, here’s a post with a good overview about how I use this online tech tool with transition skills. 

Regardless of the type of Boom Learning account that you have, there are benefits for using it with students with disabilities. With a free account, students get immediate feedback and error correction. With a premium account, teachers can access the self-grading component which then allows you to see all student results and then track progress automatically.

There are tons and tons of Boom card decks available for teachers and students to use. Here’s the Halloween-themed set that I use with students so they can practice determining the cost of an item after they use a coupon. This deck features 30 paperless task cards hosted on Boom Learning. Cards 1-30 prompt students to look at the price tag and a coupon and determine how much the item will cost after the coupon is applied.

FINAL TAKEAWAY

A seasonal activity can take a blah activity to something pretty fun! The novelty of these activities is that you can gain higher engagement while still keeping the focus on learning or practicing specific skills. Any chance to add a bit of fun to the learning routine in my special education class is a welcome one!