“What is Halloween?” Circle Time

I looove this circle time activity because it’s super simple, fun, and interactive!

We start out using the book, “What is Halloween?” by Harriet Ziefert. (Find it here on Amazon or here on Thriftbooks.) This is a really simple lift-the-flap book, and is great for introducing some basic concepts surrounding Halloween!

After reading the book, we watched the adorable “Knock Knock, Trick or Treat” song/video from Super Simple Learning on the iPad.

I printed the characters from this song on the Super Simple website (free!), and each of the kids had a turn to come up and find the matching costume for the character on the screen. (When we had more than 6 kids, I had Part 2 pulled up on an adjacent tab, so we had more lyrics available!)

We made guesses about who was coming to the door based on the shadow as they’re walking to the door, and imitated actions from each character (steered the ship like a pirate, danced like a ballerina, etc..!)

Afterwards, we practiced trick or treating using a white board or a flannel board as our door. When it was their turn, each student picked a costume (a hat or some other easy accessory- we had a few choices), then knocked on the “door” to get their treat from me! We practiced saying “trick or treat” (which was also programmed into some Big Mack switches) and “thank you,” too!

Targets:
-Halloween vocabulary
-Pronouns (He is a… She is a….)
-WHO questions
-Matching

AAC:
-Core vocabulary: “who”
-PECS: Request which costume piece they want for trick or treating
-Big Mack switch: Program “Trick or treat” or “thank you” (or both if you have more than one big mack switch or a button that can record 2 messages)

Do you practice trick or treating in your preschool classrooms? How do you practice it?