100 Spooky Halloween Words to Use in Charades or Word-Searches

Halloween a favorite childhood holiday for many, including much of my family! Not only do you get to dress up as whatever you want without anyone batting an eye, but you also get to feast on candy and party!

Halloween can be a fun time in schools, many of which throw costume parties and parades on campus. For kids, it’s a particularly fun time because they know that they get to go trick or treating and load their buckets and pillowcases up with free candy just because they knock and say “trick or treat!” Candy never comes quite as easy as that!

When you think about Halloween, the first things that probably come to mind are costumes, carving pumpkins, candy, autumn, trick-or-treating, and parties. While all of this is accurate, there should be more to the celebration, especially for the kids! Halloween is about the kids, right? Yeah, we’ll just go with that (wink).

If you are planning a few activities for the kids for Halloween, consider making word games part of your plan. Not only will this help to set the mood for the day, but it will also ensure a break time for the kids to calm down before, during, or after a sugar rush!

Here are some ways you can have fun with Halloween words:

• Word Searches: This is probably the most common of Halloween word games out there. Pick a list for your word bank and make your own, or find free printable word searches online!

• Word Scrambles: Pick a list of words and scramble each word up. See who can finish first and offer some candy as an incentive!

• Memory: Just like any ol’ memory game, make two of each word card. Each match wins a piece of candy!

• Halloween BINGO: You can either make up a bunch of cards or provide the kids with a word bank to fill in their own word list. Rather than using BINGO chips, give the kids a tempting treat to uses such as Skittles or M&Ms!

• Halloween Hangman: How appropriate! All the same Hangman rules apply, just make the words Halloween-themed instead!

• Riddles: Riddles are a fun way to get kids thinking! Base some riddles around Halloween words and see if they can guess the words! Try to have a treat related to the answer for each riddle!

• Word Sorting: If the kids are learning how to sort things, create a few categories and have them sort words into each category!

• Charades: Play this classing acting game using words and phrases related to Halloween.

Not only are these words great for making games within the classroom, but you can also use them in craft projects, when making greeting cards, or when writing dreary poems.

If you are not a teacher and don’t have young children of your own, making activities for trick-or-treaters is still a great alternative to candy for the children who may have allergies to traditional Halloween candy! You can put together little activity packs consisting of a few words games, a pencil, an eraser, and maybe some spooky stickers, too!

Regardless of what you need them for, enjoy Halloween to the fullest. Join in on haunted hayrides, make a haunted house, go bobbing for apples, and sip on some warm, fresh cider while munching on a cider donut. (Is there such a thing as eating “a” cider donut?)