Halloween Physical Education Games

Halloween-themed PE games get kids in the spirit for the holiday and counteract some of the extra candy they consume. You can find many ways to incorporate common Halloween concepts into physical activities. Most of the Halloween games work well for a variety of grade levels with only minor modifications. You might find that the students come up with more Halloween-themed games once you get started.

This PE game uses construction paper pumpkin cutouts. You’ll need at least twice as many pumpkins as students in the class. Write a different physical activity or fitness skill on each pumpkin as well as the number of times the child needs to perform the skill. Ideas include jump roping, skipping around the gym, doing the crab walk, jumping jacks, sit-ups or push-ups. All of the pumpkins are placed in the middle of the gym in the pumpkin patch. Students all run to the pumpkin patch, pick a pumpkin and perform the task. Once they complete it, they return the pumpkin and pick a new one.

Different stations around the gym represent houses for trick-or-treating. Each station has a bucket of “candy” represented by plastic chips, plastic beads or other small items. Stations each have a physical activity that is required to earn the treat. You might have the kids jump on one foot 20 times, hula hoop for 30 seconds or do 15 jumping jacks. Once the students perform the task, they collect the assigned amount of tokens for that station. Players work to complete all of the stations in a given amount of time. At the end, the kids count their Halloween loot to determine how much physical activity they completed.

The tagger for this game is the witch. The witch pretends to ride a broomstick around the gym. Two people are pumpkins and each hold an orange ball to identify themselves. The remaining students are trick-or-treaters. The witch tries to tag the trick-or-treaters to turn them into ghosts. The ghosts can’t move and must sway back and forth. The pumpkins can turn them back into trick-or-treaters by tagging them gently with the ball. Assign a new witch and pumpkins every few minutes.

You'll need a pumpkin for each team to do this Halloween relay. The number of teams depends on the size of the class. Between two and four teams usually work well. One player from each team rolls a pumpkin down the length of the gym, around a cone and back to the starting point where the next person takes a turn. Because pumpkins aren't perfectly round, students will find it challenging to get them to roll in a straight line.