Spooky season is here, and one of my favorite ways to take advantage of a new season is by diving in to studying the related Halloween vocabulary! There are so many important benefits to building vocabulary with young children, and I just know that these 5 Halloween vocabulary centers will be so helpful for you and your little learners!
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Why seasonal vocabulary?
Building vocabulary doesn’t happen by accident. Young learners benefit most from exposure + repetition + meaningful context. That’s why emergent readers and hands-on activities are so gold: you’re giving them multiple chances to see, hear, say, write, and play with new words.
Seasonal vocabulary—words tied to seasons, holidays, or themes—is a secret weapon in early literacy. Here’s why I lean into it so much:
- Relevance & excitement. When it’s October and there are pumpkins and jack-o’-lanterns all around, kids are invested. They WANT to know the words.
- Natural semantic connections. Students already have background knowledge—“I know what a witch is,” “I saw bats in a story” — so new words aren’t floating in space.
- Cross-content ties. You can link to science (the life cycle of pumpkins), art (drawing bats), or writing (spooky stories).
- Low-stakes repetition. Because the set is seasonal, you can revisit it over several days or cycles without feeling like you’re dragging the same vocabulary forever.
In short: when kids are excited about the topic, vocabulary learning becomes fun, not forced.
Vocabulary Tracing Strips
My favorite way to dive in to a new theme of seasonal vocabulary words (after reading LOTS of seasonal picture books, of course) is to start with tracing strips. These are such a handy first step in placing vocabulary words with their meaning – which for little learners includes pictures! I like to have these Halloween vocabulary strips laminated for repeated use throughout our study with dry erase markers!
Write the Room & ABC Order
The next activity in our Halloween vocabulary study is a “two fer”! (Did I give away my Southern drawl with that one??) This one set of vocabulary cards is accompanied by 2 activities. The first is a Write the Room activity! Write the Room is such a fun way to get your kiddos up and moving! If you’re teaching in the classroom, you know how badly your little learners need to get their wiggles out, and this gives them a constructive outlet. If you’re a homeschool momma, you know the same!
To use the Write the Room activity, children travel the room searching for Halloween vocabulary cards. When they find a card, they’ll match the picture on the card to the picture on their recording sheet and write the corresponding word! This is such a fun way to practice spelling their Halloween vocabulary words!
If children are ready for more of a challenge, these cards double as an ABC order activity! All they have to do is grab their new ABC order recording sheet and arrange the words into the correct order!
Emergent Reader
This little emergent reader is SUCH a fun way to engage your little learners with Halloween vocabulary! The predictive text (It is a ……) helps children grow confident in their reading, and the images help trigger their memory of the vocabulary words. In addition, they offer yet another chance to practice writing the words by tracing them. And they even double as a fun coloring book!
Vocabulary Clip Cards
The second the last Halloween vocabulary activity I like to use is this set of clip cards. Clip cards are always a winner with young kiddos, AND they incorporate fine motor skills practice – something every child needs to strengthen! To use, children read the words on the clip cards and use clothespins to clip the matching picture. This is a low-pressure way to assess whether or not children are able to read the Halloween vocabulary words!
Sentence Starters
Finally it’s time to put what your children have learned to the test! (But in a super cute and fun way, of course!) These sentence starters use the same predictive text from the emergent reader to gently guide children in “writing” their own sentences! To complete the sentences, children write the missing Halloween vocabulary word on the line.
Let’s hang out!
I hope this post helped you get a better look at our Halloween vocabulary centers! Got questions? Let me know! I’d love to chat and get to know you better! You can find us below in some of our favorite places to hang out. Can’t wait to chat with you about your child’s learning journey!
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