Halloween Word Search

A first word search for Halloween week

The words are the ones children say all October: pumpkin, costume, witch, ghost, candy. Every child knows them by sound, so the puzzle does one job, which is matching letters and noticing spelling. A child who says "scarecrow" easily still has to find S-C-A-R-E-C-R-O-W, and will spot that it is two words joined together.

Every word reads left to right or top to bottom, the way a first-grader reads. The 13 x 13 grid is small enough that a six-year-old doesn't lose their place, and the letters print large. Word lengths vary on purpose: bat and owl are three letters each, quick wins for the youngest; broomstick and scarecrow are long enough to keep a third-grader busy.

In class and at home

• Morning work on party day. On desks before the bell. It keeps a room of excited children seated until the costume parade.
• Party table. One puzzle and an orange crayon at each place, for the minutes before the snacks come out.
• Early finishers. Keep a pile by the door all week for anyone who finishes a task first.
• Before trick-or-treating. At home, it fills the long wait between getting into costume and it being dark enough to go out.

Easier or harder

For kindergarten or the start of first grade, cut the list to ten short words (bat, owl, witch, ghost, mummy, candy, spider, cobweb, pumpkin and costume) and set the grid to 10 x 10. Read each word aloud first and have children point to it in the word bank before they start hunting.

For fourth grade, or a third-grade class that finds it easy, click Medium to add the diagonals. For fifth grade and up, click Hard for all eight directions and set the grid to 15 x 15; the same eighteen words become a real search. If words that cross confuse your class, untick "Let words cross" and the puzzle spreads them out.

After the puzzle

Clap the syllables of each word found: witch is one clap, pumpkin two, skeleton three. Sort the words into one-, two- and three-clap columns on the board. Only two words need three claps, and finding them is a puzzle of its own. Second- and third-graders can then write a three-sentence Halloween story that uses three of the words, and swap stories with a partner.

Printing

Each puzzle prints on its own page with the word bank below the grid; the answer key follows on page two. Orange paper prints well and looks the part; black paper doesn't. Give first-graders a crayon or highlighter to colour each word rather than circle it. Circling a word that runs down a column is harder than it sounds at six.

The 18 words in this puzzle

The grid is 13 x 13. Edit the words, the grid size or the allowed directions above and the puzzle is rebuilt as you type.

• Pumpkin
• Lantern
• Costume
• Witch
• Broomstick
• Cauldron
• Ghost
• Skeleton
• Vampire
• Mummy
• Spider
• Cobweb
• Bat
• Owl
• Haunted
• Scarecrow
• Candy
• October