With Halloween just around the corner, it is a great time of year to put a spooky slant on your P.E. lessons! Read on for some easily adaptable Halloween themed games to try over the next couple of weeks. By teacher author, Aoife.
Almost any P.E. game can become a ghoulish Halloween game, with a sprinkle of pumpkin spice! These games can be played inside or outside, with all of the usual P.E. materials, no fuss required!
Witches hats and cauldrons
You will need:
- a large selection of small cones.
This is a Halloween spin on the old classic Cups and Saucers. Place the small cones all around the play area. Break the class into two teams, one team are trying to make all the cones sit correctly on the ground (witches hats) and the others are trying to make the cones sit upside down on the ground (cauldrons).
Allow the children to move around the space for short bursts (1 minute). After this time, count the hats and cauldrons.
Whichever team has succeeded in having the most hats/cauldrons is the winner.
You can play this game a few times in a row to ensure that each team has a chance to win. You can also vary the movements around the room, skipping, jumping, marching etc. This is a great game for getting hearts racing!
Zombie Tag
You will need:
- 2/3 orange bibs
- 2/3 hoops for the zombies
- 1 green bib for the doctor.
Choose some children to be the zombies. They must wear the orange bibs and travel around the room dragging a hoop with one foot. They can also move with their arms outstretched.
If a zombie catches a child, they child is now frozen, standing with their legs spread wide. The doctor will also be moving around the space, freeing the frozen children by crawling under the child’s legs.
Change the roles regularly, as all of the children will want a chance to be the zombie!!
Spooky Relay Race
You will need:
- pool noodles or unihoc sticks
- cones
- hoops
Break the children into 4 or 5 teams depending on the size of your class.
Set a start and finish point.
For each round of the relay race, the children must travel as a different type of Halloween character. For example, they can move like a witch by riding on a unihoc stick/pool noodle and holding a cone on their head. A zombie can drag a hoop along with his/her feet as in the previous game. Ghosts can float, spiders can crawl, the possibilities are endless!
This is also a great way to explore movement verbs and adverbs with older classes too and have the children describe other ways of moving in a playful, spooky way.
Spooky statues
For the younger classes particularly, the children really enjoy musical statues.
There are lots of songs and playlists available online: Monster Mash, Addams Family Theme, Ghostbusters, etc. that will all add an element of fun to your PE lesson, while also getting the children moving.
You could even play this music while doing the other Halloween games to add to the spooky atmosphere.
Trick or Treat?
No equipment needed!
This is a variation of the old favourite Ship to Shore.
To begin, you must ask the class to stand in a line on one side of the hall. This can be “home“. The middle of the hall can be the “haunted house” and the other side of the hall can be the “spooky castle“.
Practice calling out each of these locations and the children will run to each part of the hall. (You can choose to make this competitive – or not!) Once the children are familiar with the locations, you can add in some call and response chants and actions.
- Evil witches – the children must give an evil laugh
- Ghosts – the children must float around in a circle
- Black cats – the children must lie down and miaow
- Spooky skeletons – the children must shake ‘rattle’ their bodies
I hope you enjoy sprinkling some Halloween spice over your Halloween lessons this term!
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