Halloween Math Activities

This Halloween Mystery Tangram Puzzle combines two favorite math activities into one. This printable Halloween puzzle will have students both practicing plotting ordered pairs on the coordinate plane and solving a fun tangram puzzle using the resulting outline from the plotted ordered pairs.

This fun Halloween-themed analogy involving candy is the perfect way to introduce students to the concept of factoring out the greatest common factor of a polynomial.

Chris Luzniak shares a fun question he added to his quiz on Halloween: show the scariest math mistake you can make.

Have students bring in their pumpkins after Halloween so you can do a great hands-on scatterplot project from Austintacious Mathematics. Is there a linear relationship between the circumference and weight of a pumpkin?

In this fun candy-themed lesson, students use their math and investigation skills to figure out if there is a relationship between a person’s handspan and the amount of Halloween candy they can pick up at one time.

Teaching the Pythagorean Theorem near Halloween? I have found the perfect costume for you!

Are your students having trouble understanding the difference between OR and AND in a venn diagram? Check out these Trick or Treat Venn Diagrams.

Let your students put their linear graphing skills to the test by having them design a Haunted House in Desmos.

Wes Overton does a similar Desmos project he calls Halloween Houses.

Practice differentiating between independent and dependent variables with a fun game of Ghosts in the Graveyard.

The Ghosts in the Graveyard review game can be adapted for almost any math topic you can think of!

Chris Bolognese shares a nifty way to use Google Search Trends to produce graphs of how frequently people are searching for things like “candy.”

I love his suggestion of how to use these graphs to practice calculus vocabulary such as increasing/decreasing and concavity.

This 9 Pumpkins Puzzle is sure to provide your students a fun Halloween themed math challenge. Without lifting your pencil, draw 4 straight lines that pass through all nine of the pumpkins.

This jack-o’-lantern made from pentominoes is the perfect halloween puzzle for math class. In this math activity, students must work to arrange a standard set of twelve pentominoes to form a jack-o’-lantern.

This Halloween Symbols Puzzle challenges students to arrange four cards so that various numbers of symbols are visible on each card. This is a fun Halloween-themed version of a classic playing card puzzle.

October is the perfect time to challenge students with this bat tangram puzzle! Tangrams are one of my favorite puzzles to use in the math classroom.

Bring some spooky fun to your classroom or party with this fun Halloween triples word puzzle. Can you reassemble the trios of letters to form words related to Halloween?

The Ghost Game is a fun two player game which involves coloring in or covering up ghosts arranged in a 5 x 5 grid. The player that colors in the last ghost loses.

Looking for a quick game for the fall or Halloween season? Picking Pumpkins is a game for two players.

The game is easy to understand, quick to play, and full of mathematics to analyze. This game can be used anytime throughout the month of October. 

Turn a few sheets of orange cardstock into this jack-o-lantern sliceform using just a pair of scissors.

Sliceforms are models made from intersecting parallel planes which slot together to form a 3D shape which fold flat for storage. They are so fun to create and play with!

Chris Bolognese introduces his students to the field of spherical geometry by having them draw on top of pumpkins.

I sat through a similar lesson using balloons before, and my mind was BLOWN.

Did you know that child pedestrian fatalities spike on Halloween?

What calendar date would have the least fatalities?

There are so many things you could explore with your students with this graph.

Get your students both embracing the spooky season and learning some math history with this fun tombstone project where they create tombstones for famous mathematicians.

Looking for a dress-up idea to involve your entire math department?

• Expo Markers Department Costume
• Social Distancing Formula Math Department Costume

Teaching trig? I am so inspired by this Trig or Treat shirt shared by Burnside Math.

What other creative ways could you incorporate math symbols into a Halloween Jack-o-Lantern? Burnside Math uses square root of -1 for the “i’s”

Want to start a new tradition at your school? I absolutely love the idea shared by Allison Richards of having students decorate pumpkins to look like various teachers at the school.

I think my students would LOVE this!

I might have to make a paper-based version of this activity where students draw a jack-o-lantern design to represent various teachers.

Casey shares a fun, quick Desmos slide where students have to design their own Halloween costume.

I was incredibly inspired by this collection of physics themed Halloween costumes by a college physics professor.

It makes me wonder – could we come up with a mathematical version of this?

I am super impressed by the dedication that went into creating a Periodic Table of Pumpkins!