Halloween Activities for High School Students

As the leaves change color and the air turns crisp, there’s an unmistakable feeling of magic – it’s Halloween season! While high school students may seem too young to celebrate this season, they still get caught up in the fun, and can be a good way to incorporate some fun in the classroom. Let’s take a look at some fun and engaging Halloween activities for your secondary students. 

Before we dive into the enchanting world of Halloween-themed life skills and culinary arts in this blog post, let’s take a walk back and teach the rich history behind this celebrated holiday.

History of Halloween

Halloween has roots in ancient Celtic festivals and has evolved over thousands of years. The holiday traces back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. It was believed that on the night of October 31st, the boundary between the living and the dead was blurred, allowing spirits to roam the earth. This activity includes the history of Halloween foods while teaching about the holiday’s past, which is great for middle schoolers and high schoolers. These fun activities include a history of Halloween foods presentation,, a video on the history of candy guided notes, a Halloween Candy Survey, and recipes! 

Students enjoy learning about the history of Halloween foods and candy. This video is a great addition to a Halloween activity. We have questions about it in the Halloween Foods lesson pack. 

Halloween Recipes for High School and Middle School

Cooking in the classroom during this season is a lot of fun, and you can invite school staff and students to enjoy the fruits of your labor because eating the treats is the best part. These recipes are great for Halloween parties in your school and can help students prepare to make these fun snacks at home for party guests if they want! Here are a few of our favorite recipes to get your students in the Halloween spirit.

Caramel Apple Nachos:

Ingredients:

• Apples, sliced
• Caramel sauce
• Chocolate chips
• Sprinkles

Instructions:

1. Arrange the apple slices on a platter.
2. Drizzle caramel sauce over the apples.
3. Sprinkle chocolate chips and Halloween-themed sprinkles on top.

Mummy Dogs:

Ingredients:

• Hot dogs
• Crescent roll dough
• Mustard or ketchup (for eyes)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to the temperature specified on the crescent roll package.
2. Wrap the hot dogs in strips of crescent roll dough to create a mummy-like effect.
3. Bake according to the crescent roll package instructions.
4. Use mustard or ketchup to create eyes on the mummies.

Creepy Deviled Eggs:

Ingredients:

• Hard-boiled eggs
• Mayonnaise
• Mustard
• Paprika (for seasoning)
• Black olives (for spider bodies)
• Red pepper strips (for legs)

Instructions:

1. Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half lengthwise and remove the yolks.
2. Mash the yolks with mayonnaise, mustard, and a sprinkle of paprika.
3. Pipe or spoon the mixture back into the egg whites.
4. Create spiders by placing a black olive half in the center for the body and red pepper strips for the legs.

Dracula Teeth

Ingredients:

• Chocolate chip cookies (already made)
• Slivered almonds (for the “fangs”)
• Mini marshmallows (for the “fangs”)
• Red frosting (or red decorating gel)

Take your already-baked chocolate chip cookies.

1. Use a small knife or a clean toothpick to make small indentations on the top of the cookies where you want to place the “teeth” and “fangs”.
2. Take slivered almonds and gently press them into the indentations, positioning them to look like fangs.
3. Press two mini marshmallows below each almond fang, using a bit of red frosting to “glue” them in place.
4. Use red frosting to create “blood” by adding a small amount near each “tooth” base and reinforcing the marshmallows.
5. Let the “blood” set, and your Dracula Teeth Chocolate Chip Cookies are ready to delight your Halloween party guests!

These cookies are sure to be a spooky hit at your Halloween gathering! Enjoy!

Creepy Eyeballs

Ingredients:

• Cake mix (of your choice)
• Frosting (compatible with the cake flavor)
• White candy melts
• Red decorating gel or red candy melts
• Optional: Edible candy eyeballs or white frosting with black frosting dots.

Instructions:

1. Bake the Cake:
   • Prepare and bake the cake according to the package instructions. Let it cool completely.
2. Make Cake Crumbs:
   • Crumble the cooled cake into fine crumbs using your hands or a food processor.
3. Mix with Frosting:
   • Mix in frosting gradually until the cake crumbs reach a dough-like consistency. The frosting will act as a binder.
4. Shape Cake Balls:
   • Roll the mixture into small, round cake balls about the size of a cherry. Place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
5. Chill the Cake Balls:
   • Place the cake balls in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour to firm up.
6. Melt Candy Melts:
   • Melt white candy melts in the microwave or using a double boiler, stirring until smooth.
7. Dip Cake Balls:
   • Dip the tip of a lollipop stick into the melted candy melts and insert it into a cake ball. This helps secure the stick in place.
   • Dip each cake ball into the melted candy melts, ensuring it’s fully coated. Allow excess to drip off.
8. Set Cake Pops:
   • Insert the stick end of each cake pop into a styrofoam block or something similar to allow them to set upright.
9. Create Eyeballs:
   • Once the white coating has set, use red decorating gel or melted red candy melts to create bloodshot lines around the coated cake pops.
10. Add Eyeballs:
    • Place an edible candy eyeball or create small eyeballs with a dot of white and a smaller dot of black (using edible gel or frosting) onto each cake pop.
11. Let Them Set:
    • Allow the cake pops to fully set. This may take a little time.
12. Enjoy!
    • Your Cake Pop Creepy Eyeballs are now ready to be enjoyed.

These creepy eyeball cake pops will surely be a hit at any Halloween gathering or themed party!

Halloween Lesson Plans and Activities

Halloween Candy Design

Have students create their own Halloween Candy! This is one of those fun Halloween activities that will get your students’ creativity flowing and can be a funny way to have students interact with each other. 

You can start with a Halloween Candy poll and see which candy is your students’ favorite. 

For a higher level project, have them dig deeper into the history of famous candy makers and have them present on them. This is a great opportunity for project-based learning and presentation skills. This should take at least a class period to research and then another class period for presentations. Here are some of the criteria the students can research:

• Candy makers’ early life
• How they began making candy
• What candy are the most well-known for
• Unique ingredients in the candy
• The ways they grew the business (marketing, advertising)
• Statistics on how many are sold, any increase over the years in numbers, etc. 

Check out this video on the origins of popular Halloween Candy.

Halloween Party Ideas for the Classroom

The recipes include googly eyes chocolate balls, Jack Skellington pops, and Pumpkin Rice Krispie Treats. These are a great way to prepare for a classroom Halloween celebration and a fundraising opportunity. 

Listen to a Creepy AudioBook

Sometimes, you want to listen to scary stories during this spooky season. Check out the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and listen to the story of the headless horseman or the classic novel, Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe as an option to listen to with your high school students. It is creepy and a cultural icon that will have you hooked. You can create a Halloween writing prompts that goes with the story. Even if you don’t teach ELA, this is a great idea for a cross-curricular lesson. Download this free Halloween word search to keep your students busy while they listen to the Monster Mash and eat candy. It has Halloween foods vocabulary, which is great for your culinary arts or family and consumer science classes!

Halloween Crafts for High School Students

Crafts are fun to make with middle and high school students during Halloween. You can even create these as stem challenges for students, give them the materials, and see what they come up with! Creepy carrots and spider web hanging craft. Introduce a silly Halloween craft, and your students will giggle while making these creepy carrots. Play spooky songs, have your students munch on candy corn, and let them make these decorations the day before Halloween to decorate your classroom. 

For Creepy Carrots:

1. Cut Carrot Shapes:
   • Cut out carrot shapes from the orange construction paper. You can find a template online or draw them freehand.
2. Add Details:
   • Use a black marker to draw creepy faces on the carrots. You can make them as spooky as you like!
3. Create Carrot Tops:
   • Cut out carrot tops from the green construction paper and glue them to the carrots.

For Spider Webs:

1. Cut Spider Web Shapes:
   • Cut out spider web shapes from the black construction paper. They can be simple or intricate, depending on your preference.
2. Attach String (Optional):
   • If you want to hang the spider webs, punch a hole at the top and thread a piece of string or yarn through it. Tie a knot to secure it.

Putting it all together:

1. Arrange on String:
   • Lay out your creepy carrots and spider webs in the order you want them to appear on the garland.
2. Attach to String:
   • Use glue to attach the creepy carrots and spider webs onto a long piece of string or yarn, or poke small holes and thread the string. Make sure to leave some space between each decoration.
3. Hang and Display:
   • Once everything is attached, you can hang your garland up in your classroom, hallway, or wherever you want to display it.

This craft combines both creepy carrots and spider webs for a Halloween-themed garland that’s easy to make and perfect for high school students. It allows for creativity in designing the carrots and spider webs, and the finished garland can be a great decoration for the classroom. Enjoy crafting!

Sometimes, an easy worksheet is a fun way to fill class time. Download this free Halloween Wordsearch to use in your class!

As we enter the season of crisp air and falling leaves, an unmistakable magic comes with the arrival of the Halloween season. This time of year provides a unique opportunity for middle and high school students to unleash their boundless creativity. It’s a season of crafting, a chance to breathe life into haunted decorations that will send shivers down spines and elicit admiring gasps from friends and family.

It’s a time for diving headfirst into spine-tingling tales, for cozying up with spooky audiobooks that transport them to realms unknown, awakening their imaginations with every eerie word. And, of course, it’s an opportunity to savor the deliciously ghoulish delights of creepy recipes, concocting treats that are as terrifyingly tasty as they are visually captivating during class time.

This spooky holiday, with its ghostly apparitions and mysterious pumpkins, offers more than just the thrill of fear; it provides a stage for bonding with loved ones, a time for building traditions that will be cherished for years to come. Whether you’re crafting haunted classroom decor, engrossed in a suspenseful, spooky story, or whipping up a cauldron of ghoulish delights such as cake pop eyeballs or mini rice crispy pumpkins in the classroom, remember that the Halloween season is a magical time for young minds to let their imagination run wild. It’s a time to celebrate the spirit of this delightfully spooky holiday and to revel in the shared experiences that will forever be etched into their memories.  I hope that you and your students have fun this season and embrace the enchantment of this Halloween. 

*This post may have affiliate links included.