- Early Math
5 Halloween Math Activities
Math is delightful (and frightful!) with Noggin’s Halloween games and activities. Here are 5 scary-fun creative ways to help your little learner practice math skills, including counting, measuring, and patterning!
Pumpkins Made to Measure
Learn About
Measuring Objects
What They’ll Need
A small pumpkin – real or pretend
- When a child measures using objects in the home, it helps prepare them to measure with a ruler as they grow older.
- Use a small pumpkin; you can use a real one or a pretend one at home to measure different objects.
- Practice measuring skills as you and your child use the pumpkin to measure how long or short objects are in the house. For instance, a book could measure three pumpkins long!
Halloween Hints
Ask your child: How many pumpkins long is the table? How many pumpkins wide is the bed? The book? Which object is longer? Which one is shorter?
Carve Out Counting Time
Learn About
Counting
What They’ll Need
Pumpkin; marker or pen; paper or notecards (or download Noggin’s printable math cards)
- Pick out a pumpkin together, and bring it home.
- Help your child draw a jack-o’-lantern face on the pumpkin, then have a grownup carve it out. Scoop out the seeds.
- Put the seeds in a bowl. Before or while you wash them, ask your child to count the seeds.
- Download Noggin’s math cards – or create your own by simply writing one numeral (1 to 10) on each card.
- Have your child pick a card, then ask them to place the correct number of seeds next to or on it!
Monster Math
Learn About
Counting
What They’ll Need
Paper, kid-safe scissors, glue, crayons, markers, or any kind of art supplies you have at home!
- Help your child cut out any shape: a circle, a square, a rhombus – anything they choose! This will be your child’s monster’s body. If using white paper, help your child color it in.
- Decide on which body part you want to add first: ear, mouth, arm, finger, leg, toe – be creative! You can use any kind of art supplies to create these body parts, including bits of paper, cloth, pipe cleaners, or they can draw the body parts with crayons or markers.
- Next, ask your child to roll a single die.
- What number did they roll or pick? That’s how many of that body part your child should add. (For instance, if they had picked eyes, and they rolled a 5, then they would add 5 eyes to their monster.)
- Repeat with each new body part.
- Name your monster when you’re done!
Halloween Hints
No die? Cut out 6 pieces of paper, write a numeral (1 to 6) on each one, and put them all in a box or hat. Ask your child to pick one out!
Halloween Pattern Play
Learn About
Patterns
What They’ll Need
Kid-safe scissors, colored paper and/or markers or crayons
- Help your child cut out the following:
- Ghosts out of white paper (or simply cut out white ovals to represent ghosts)
- Bats out of black paper (or simply black rectangles)
- Pumpkins out of orange paper (or simply orange circles)
- Witch hats out of purple paper (or simply purple triangles)
- Now, make some spooky patterns!
- Ghosts out of white paper (or simply cut out white ovals to represent ghosts)
- Bats out of black paper (or simply black rectangles)
- Pumpkins out of orange paper (or simply orange circles)
- Witch hats out of purple paper (or simply purple triangles)
Halloween Hints
- Remember, a pattern needs to repeat at least three times, like ghost, hat – ghost, hat – ghost, hat.
- Gradually try more challenging patterns like bat, pumpkin, pumpkin, hat – bat, pumpkin, pumpkin, hat – bat, pumpkin, pumpkin, hat.
- How many patterns can you make? Can you guess each other’s patterns?
Matching Is a Scream!
Learn About
Matching
What They’ll Need
Paper or cardstock, kid-safe scissors, crayons and/or markers
- Help your child cut out 20 squares of paper.
- On two squares, draw the same Halloween item. Repeat 9 more times with different items.
- Turn them face down and mix them up. Then lay out the cards into four rows of five cards each.
- On two squares, draw the same Halloween item. Repeat 9 more times with different items. The first player turns over 2 cards. If the 2 cards match, the player can take them and go again. If the first player doesn’t find a match, they turn their two cards back over, and then it’s the next player’s turn.
- Keep going until all the Halloween pairs have been picked!.
Halloween Hints
Some fun and easy items to draw: cats, bats, ghosts, pumpkins, witch hat, broom, moon, candy, spider, monster, and eyeball.
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Kid-safe & ad-free
New content added weekly
Accessible on multiple devices
Downloadable books & games for offline play