Part of the Cool Sites series

Halloween is one of the most fun holidays. Kids love the spooky monsters, sounds, music, dances, treats, traditions, haunted houses, and costumes that surround the holiday. As an educator or parent that has an iPad, iPhone, or iPod you can capitalize on this time to help kids learn while celebrating the holiday. Here are free apps to help encourage math, literacy, and problem-solving skills. Some of the apps are just fun!

Apps

ScrapPad Halloween- Kids create a scrapbook with various creatures, words, and their own images. Have the students write stories to accompany their books. They can even work in pairs. They can email the scrapbooks to their parents or friends or post on Facebook. Only works on the iPad.

Halloween Card Creator- Kids create e-cards with various choices in backgrounds, characters, and their own images and text. Have the students e-mail the e-cards to friends of family members.

Halloween Origami- With this great app, kids learn to create various spooky creatures in origami. Kids can watch videos after seeing the step-by-step instructions.

Halloween Counting & Words Games- Created for the iPad, this free app features 8 different learning games for kids to celebrate Halloween and learn math, spelling, and vocabulary.

Carve A Pumpkin- With this great app from Parents magazine, kids create a jack-o-lantern that lights up after it is carved. Kids can even add spooky stickers to their pumpkin. There are various pumpkins to choose from and backgrounds. Have the students e-mail the e-cards to friends of family members. A follow-up task includes having students get into pairs. Student A describes the pumpkin created. Student B must try to recreate the pumpkin by the verbal description. Make sure the students save the pumpkin to their photo library to compare. You can also have students try to carve their pumpkins in real life after the drawing.

Halloween ebook- Students read this story and it has a personal touch. Kids upload their own photos for a surprise ending at the end of the story.

Talking Skeleton- Like the famous Talking Tom app, kids speak and an animated skeleton repeats their words in a funny voice. Their messages can be recorded through video and sent to parents in an email. Have the students send Halloween greetings to their families or friends or create a video of them doing a Halloween rap.

WordSearch Halloween- This app provides several word searches. These are divided in levels from easy to difficult. Listen to scary music or your own while you play. There are over 200 puzzles under 3 categories- Halloween, costumes, and treats. This app would be great to encourage students to learn various vocabulary. Try getting the kids to then use the words the find in a story or poem.

Word Search- Another Halloween wordsearch app with cool backgrounds but less features than the above app.

Haunted Hangman- Guess the Halloween word and get a pumpkin with treats. If you lose the pumpkin is carved then becomes sad.

Make a Zombie- Students create zombies and choose from various backgrounds, bodies, clothes, eyes, hairstyles, heads, pair of legs and mouths.  A follow-up task includes having students get into pairs. Student A describes the zombie created. Student B must try to recreate the zombie by the verbal description. Make sure the students save the zombie to their photo library to compare. You can also have your students create stories about their zombies and read them in a circle aloud.

Mash-o-Ween- This app is for teens. It is based on a famous game that I played in my teens before mobile devices were mainstream. Teens type in various options for categories and at the end this app tells their future. Have the students work in pairs then after read the fortune to each other. Some of these deal with romance, costumes, and more.

Landon’s Pumpkins- This book has several features to help kids follow along the story and learn vocabulary. At the end a recipe is given for Roasted Pumpkin seeds, which would be a great reward for a teacher to make with a class after reading a story.

It is Halloween- Kids create Halloween scenes with characters and backgrounds. They can even animate them. Have the students write stories to accompany their scenes. They can even work in pairs. They can email these to their parents or friends or post on Facebook.

Halloween Countdown- Features include a Halloween countdown with sounds, various sounds (some you pay for so be careful), ringtones, background music loops, 100s of costume ideas, wallpaper images, trivia, and a flashlight for trick-or-treating.

Halloween Voice Transformer- Only the reaper voice is free, but kids speak into the mic and record their message which then is played back in a spooky voice. Have the students email Halloween greetings or messages to their families or friends or even record a spooky story or song. Thanks to Tara Benwell for recommending this app and sending me a spooky message in my email!

Ace Math- Learn multiplication, division, and addition and celebrate Halloween. This is basic math.

MouthOff Lite- This app works best on the iPhone/iPod. Kids choose between various silly mouths and hold the device to their mouth while they talk. This always brings a lot of laughs. Encourage students to repeat vocabulary or even tell spooky stories in a circle.

If you enjoyed this post, check out other apps I recommend to encourage learning!

Challenge:

Try one of these apps and let us know how they worked for you!

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What Halloween apps have you discovered to encourage literacy?