Thirty-six Halloween words, from pumpkins and costumes to black cats and candy corn, on unique printable cards. The spooky words are the picture-book kind, so the youngest students can play.
36 items · a 5 × 5 card with a free space needs 24 or more. More items make the cards differ.For review bingo, type answer | clue (“56 | 7 × 8”): the card shows the answer, the caller reads the clue. Two columns pasted from a spreadsheet work too. Start a line with an emoji (“🐶 dog”) for a picture square.
Showing 4 of 31 pages. (Print always prints every page.)
To save a PDF, choose Print, then “Save as PDF” as the printer. Only the sheets print.
30 different cards. No two are the same. The card number and set number on every card let the caller check a winner (press C while calling).
About this set
Halloween falls on October 31, and in most classrooms it means costumes, a parade and a party rather than anything frightening. This list stays on the playful side: the pumpkin and the jack-o’-lantern (the custom began with carved turnips in Ireland and Scotland before pumpkins took over in North America), trick or treat, the friendly spooks (ghost, bat, black cat, owl, spider) and the party itself (costume parade, treat bag, caramel apple). There are no gore words. A school that does not mark Halloween can delete the few spooky squares and play the rest as a pumpkin-and-owls fall game.
Grades: Pre-K to 5th grade. Best in: October.
The words on the cards
Pumpkin · Jack-o’-lantern · Costume · Trick or treat · Candy · Candy corn · Ghost · Witch · Black cat · Bat · Spider · Spider web · Skeleton · Mummy · Vampire · Haunted house · Broomstick · Cauldron · Scarecrow · Full moon · Owl · Mask · Pumpkin patch · Caramel apple · Costume parade · Wizard · Goblin · Cobweb · Treat bag · Flashlight · Fog · Fall festival · October 31 · Doorbell · Carving · Pumpkin seeds
How to play, and five ideas
Costume parade: as each costume walks past, call a word that matches it (witch, skeleton, cat), and have students cover that square if they have it.
Mystery bag: put small props in a bag (a plastic spider, pumpkin seeds, a candy corn) and pull one out as the next call, so students guess the word before they see it.
Describe it: a student who has the word on the card describes it in one sentence without saying it (“It is orange and has a face”), and the class guesses.
Kindergarten version: make 3 × 3 cards from the nine easiest words (bat, ghost, candy, mask, moon, owl, spider, cat, pumpkin) and hold up a picture for each call.
Fall festival edit: delete ghost, skeleton, mummy, witch and the rest of the spooky squares to keep a harvest-and-owls game for a school that skips Halloween.
No. The skeleton, ghost, mummy and vampire are the spookiest words, and they are the cartoon versions found in picture books. Delete any word you would rather not use and the cards are rebuilt without it.
Our school does not celebrate Halloween. Can I still use this?
Yes. Remove the Halloween-only words (trick or treat, costume, ghost, witch and so on) and keep pumpkins, scarecrows, owls, apples and the moon, or use the Fall bingo set, which has no Halloween in it.
Can I change the words?
Yes. The 36 words are in the box above the cards. Delete, add or edit any line and the cards are rebuilt at once. Nothing is saved on our servers.
How do I call the game?
Press “Call the game”. Each press of the space bar tumbles the ball cage and pops out the next item in very large type, with the list of items already called beside it. Press C and type a card number to check a winner, P to change the win pattern, V to have each call read aloud, and F to fill the projector.
How do I save the cards as a PDF?
Press Print and choose “Save as PDF” as the printer. Each page can also be saved as a PNG picture from under its preview.
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