Book Review: Spooky Stories Aloud

September 11, 2024 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

When my daughter was younger it seems like spooky stories were an all-year thing, with “The Ghost and Jenny Jemima” a regular feature. Whether you’re looking for a readaloud for the classroom or home, Spooky Poems Aloud is a fun one for Halloween season and beyond.

It includes 20 poems written by Joseph Coleho and illustrated by Daniel Gray-Barnett. They include poems of different styles such as limericks, poems with repeating lines, rhyming and non-rhyming. One poem loses a line every stanza, while another repeats an onomatopoeia. There’s also a renga, which is made up of tanka poems (lines of five syllables, then 7, then 5, 7 and 7), a pantoum and a villanelle, both of which have specific rhyme structures and repeating lines.

Many of the poems suggest that kids try writing one similar, such as a limerick, rules for a club for ghoulish creatures (examples in the book are werewolves and vampires), a poem about a scary plant or writing a poem that incorporates different senses.

This would be fun to do in the classroom, reading the poem from the book and having kids write and illustrate their own version, then share and display in the classroom. Or you could make a class poem around one of the prompts, such as asking kids what pranks they would pull if they were a ghost. One poem asks kids to illustrate the witches’ ball described in one poem, and the illustrations throughout are sure to inspire kids to want to draw their own illustrations to their poems.

This book would be a fun addition to the reading center during spooky season and an easy way to add a little poetry unit in October. Or just read it at home — but not too close to bedtime!

About the book: 40 pages, hardcover, 20 poems. Published 2024 by Wide Eyed Editions, suggested retail price $19.99.

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Fun Halloween Worksheets for Kids

After sharing some witch themed math activities, I found a bunch more fun printable worksheets with a Halloween theme for kids to try, so let’s take a look at some more low-prep Halloween learning fun.

Give kids practice measuring bats, spiders, ghosts and more with these printables from What I Have Learned Teaching. Kids can use a ruler, unit cubes or even little Halloween themed erasers to measure and track the size of the images.

Practice symmetry by drawing half a haunted house, ghost, skull or other simple images with this activity from Printables Hub.

I always love a good roll and draw activity, too, so check out this roll and draw a ghost activity (which has printable instructions) from Finding Myself Young.

Missy Printable Design has a cute set of Halloween worksheets for preschool, including tracing the letter H and a haunted house, spider counting, number tracing, sequencing, coloring pages and more.

The Halloween themed printables from The Artisan Life are meant to be playdough mats, and you can definitely use them for that to make the shape and trace the letters. But you could also use pipe cleaners or Wikki Stix, or line up buttons or anything else on them.

Older kids will enjoy this witch’s brew logic puzzle from Education.com. The witch has made different potions with different colors that do different things, and using the clues you can figure out which one is which. (Don’t worry; there’s an answer key included if you can’t figure it out on your own!)

Another fun puzzle is this decoder activity from Crafting Cheerfully. The holiday icons each represent a letter, and kids can use the decoder to answer the riddle. This isn’t a free resource (and the link in the post is broken but you can find it here) but it includes 20 riddles and an editable file so you can make up your own codes to decipher.

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