Here's a Mystery Cauldron Halloween center activity idea that can be easily differentiated from toddler to elementary school student! It may also be a fun theme to add to your classroom's calming corner if you have one.

This post will first outline the set up, and then list some adaptation suggestions to suit kids from toddler to fifth-grader!

This year I thought it was time to update my favorite Halloween Brain Break collection to share with you. Since my last Halloween Brain Break post, which was about 2 years ago, I've discovered some new and fun ideas to implement in the classroom and home. Some of these brain breaks work well for younger students, others for older, and some both. Either way, if you are looking for some fresh and 'spooky' themed ideas for brain breaks in your classroom this year, keep on reading. 

Suddenly, the cat was very concerned!

Use this mystery prompt to see what ideas your students come up with about 'what could have happened?' This particular prompt will make for a great writing center activity during the Halloween season.

Prep: Print and laminate the image below into a card to use as an early finisher task or writing center activity.
OR
​Display on the board for a whole class writing activity. 

There are plenty of ways you may wish to use this prompt. If you would like some ideas, keep on reading.

This is a fun and simple way to get some spooky math thinking in during this Halloween. As in the image below, ​students will be creating their own Halloween word problems to match the answer given. 

This is easy to set up. All I did for the above was:

• Type up one page with 'The Answer is' and made the font as large as possible.
• On the second page, I decided on a number suitable for my students to work with. In the example above, 14. I also added something of a Halloween nature to make it thematic for the season. e.g. pumpkins
• Being for the younger ones, I also chose to show the 14 pumpkins visually. For older students (especially if using larger numbers), the picture part could be skipped. 
• At the bottom, glue (or staple) the sides of a manila folder to form a pouch. On the front of the folder, write (or print) 'The question could be?' 

The pouch is the spot for students to put their completed word problems in. At the end, pull them out to read to the rest of the class.

Keep the top and bottom and just change the middle to a new number and Halloween theme item to keep refreshing the activity. 
Here's some more examples below:

This sort of activity works well as part of a daily math morning routine or warm-up, The more students do it, the better word problems you will start to find. I love how creative the kids can get with this, and the best part is that they are thinking mathematically at the same time too! 

If it is the first time you are introducing this activity to your class, modeling and guiding a few word problems first would be best. I like to think aloud by asking myself these questions:

1. What is the item that must be featured in my word problem? Pumpkins
2. What math operation will I use in my word problem? Subtraction
3. What other characters could I add to my word problem? (Maybe one good character and one bad character) Granny, Wicked Witch.
4. Where is my word problem going to be set?  Granny’s Garden
5. Any other details? Wicked witch steals pumpkins from Granny’s Garden.
6. Practice equations to make sure it equals the answer. (20 - 6 = 14)

EXAMPLE: There were 20 pumpkins in Granny’s Garden. On the night of Halloween, a wicked witch landed in her garden and stole 6 of Granny’s pumpkins! How many pumpkins did Granny find left in her garden? 

I’ll share another way of doing this sort of activity in my next post and include a cool Halloween freebie for you too! Stay tuned!

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