Halloween Music Lessons Elementary: Fun Activities & Games

Looking for Halloween music lessons and activities? The month of October is an excellent time to include some Halloween fun into your music lesson plans. Here are some music suggestions and activity ideas to help with your lesson planning.

Halloween Music Listening

There are lots of Halloween themed pop hits (I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you about Thriller), but if you want to include some more classical pieces into your halloween music activities, there are some great ones! Click here for a Youtube playlist of these pieces and more.

Toccata & Fugue in D Minor (widely attributed to JS Bach)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Paul Dukas)
Night on Bald Mountain (Modest Mussorgsky)
Hall of the Mountain King (from Peer Gynt, by Edvard Grieg)
O Fortuna (Carl Orff)
Hansel ud Gretel: Prelude “The Witch’s Ride” (John Pritchard)
Danse Macabre (Saint-Saens)
The Water Goblin (Dvorak)
Dream of the Night of the Sabbath (from Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz)
The Night Creeps Slowly (Ryan Smith)
Funeral March (from Piano Sonata No 2 by Chopin)
Totentanz by Liszt
Isle of the Dead (Rachmaninoff)
Funeral March of a Marionette (Gounod) – best known as the theme music for the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Halloween Music Lessons – Listening Response Ideas

Free draw – provide paper and art materials and invite students to create a visual response to the music they hear (this works well for one of the longer pieces such as Night on Bald Mountain or The Water Goblin)
Complete a generic listening response organizer

Halloween Instrumentals from Movies & TV

When I taught intermediate grades my older students really enjoyed playing “which movie is this” with soundtrack pieces. Split students into two teams, play the audio without sharing your screen and see who can guess the correct movie first. Obviously, with younger students it would be better to stick with lighter themed selections – such as Ghostbusters. Click here for a Youtube playlist of Halloween Film & TV themes.

Jaws Title Theme (John Williams)
Suite from Psycho: Prelude (Bernard Herrmann)
Nightmare on Elm Street (Charles Bernstein)
Ghostbusters Theme
The Nightmare Before Christmas – This is Halloween
Beetlejuice
Gremlins

Looking for a fun Done-For-You Halloween music game that uses these music tracks?

Halloween Music Bingo Game

This fun Halloween music bingo game isn’t just “check off the song when you hear it”. For each track, listening clues are included that are based on the elements of music, training students to listen critically to the music they hear.

More Halloween Music Lesson Plans

Halloween Music Mystery

I had so much fun creating this Halloween Music Activity! It’s very similar to an escape room style activity but arranged as a booklet. Super easy to use – just copy for students and go!

It starts with an engaging two-page story that sets up the mystery. Then, students review their knowledge of music theory to reveal the clues. Once they have revealed all the clues, then they can solve the mystery. This activity is best for grades 4, 5, & 6.

Halloween Music Rhythm Center & Composition Activity

I love this Halloween rhythm activity pack because it is just so versatile! Students create their own rhythm composition using the Halloween words, but you can use it in several ways:

You can set up the colored mats and rhythm dice cube as a center, with students using either laminated cards or their own black and white copy of the mats to record their composition;
You can make copies of the black and white version of both dice and mats for students to make their own dice and then roll/write their rhythms;
You can even use this as an online activity or virtual center with the included google slides version.

Truth or Dare Halloween Music Lesson Plan

Halloween Truth or Dare is a fun little activity that is great for the last class before Halloween when the kiddos are a bit squirrelly.

The TRUTH cards ask students to answer trivia questions relating to both music and Halloween (song lyrics, name-the-song, etc). The questions included are all related to Halloween music, but you can also use the blank cards to add review questions for whatever material you are currently studying.

The DARE cards challenge students to complete tasks that stretch their creative thinking, including improvisation, found-item sound exploration, etc.

Music Truth or Dare will get your whole class singing, creating, & giggling!

Halloween Music Fun Pack for K-1

This fun music activity pack with lesson suggestions is a great way to fill in your music lesson plans for Halloween. Focusing on fundamental skills such as beat vs rhythm and high and low sounds, they are a great way to keep your kiddos on track even during candy season!

Includes presentation file with poem, song, and sound clips, 7 pages of worksheet activities and lesson suggestions.