Are you looking for some Halloween literacy games for preschoolers? It’s the season for lots of pumpkins, creepy crawlies, and ghosts and ghouls activities likes this one! Preschoolers love them! This is a friendly ghosts theme Old Maid card game that your preschoolers are sure to love as well. With over 5+ Halloween literacy activities for preschool, we have you covered for fall literacy fun!
Be sure to grab a free copy of your friendly ghosts theme Old Maid card game at the end of this post, and then stick around to find other printable Halloween activities for preschoolers.
Halloween Literacy Activities
Fall is here and we have you covered with fun Halloween literacy activities for preschool! This post is full of Halloween literacy ideas including our ghost themed old maid card game based on letter recognition and upper and lower case matching.
Be sure to keep this printable with your other pre-k Halloween activities. You’ll use it again and again. We also love using the pumpkin activity pack or our Halloween activity pack, perfect for preschool fall fun!
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Pumpkin Activity Pack$5.00 -
Halloween Activity Pack$5.00
Pre K Literacy Games
We have lots of pre-k literacy games that we use year round that can be used during any season! Check out our list of our favorite preschool literacy games.
- Free Literacy Printables
- 10 DIY Reading Games for Kids
- Alphabet Mats Literacy Activities for Preschool
- 8 Free and Fun Activities for Literacy Centers
Halloween Preschool Games
Infuse engaging learning this slightly spooky season and play Halloween games with your preschoolers!
- Creepy Crawly Halloween Sensory Bin
- Halloween Games with Plastic Eyeballs
- Spider Web Walking Halloween Game
- Halloween Themed Playdough Activities
Halloween Books for Preschoolers
Ghost books for preschoolers are so funny! Here are some of our favorites that we read every single year.
Preschool Halloween Literacy Activities
This game needs to be added to your Halloween theme for preschool. It’s a pre k learning game that teaches the alphabet in a fun and engaging way, and all with a super fun theme, too! Ghosts!
But I promise this is a non-spooky ghost activity for preschool.
Friendly Ghosts Old Maid Card Game
Have you ever invited your preschooler to play Old Maid? It’s a hilarious time between the both of you. You know, they hardly keep a straight face when they pull the old maid card; it shows how much fun this game can be for everyone involved!
In this ghosts version — perfect for a fun Halloween preschool theme — the “old maid” is actually the ghost heart, and you want to keep it!
Why Play Games
Research has shown that games are essential for healthy development in early childhood and beyond. Play lets children practise what they know, and also what they don’t. It allows them to experiment through trial and error, find solutions to problems, work out the best strategies, and build new confidence and skills.
The Importance of Play, Cambridge English Language Assessment
Additional Materials
Print in color on heavy card stock. You can laminate the cards, but they will be slippery and difficult for little hands to hold. But that’s when a cardholder comes in handy. This is the one I use for my preschoolers.
I also chose to print on this fun marbly scrapbook paper. This is not a necessary step, but it adds to the theme.
How to Play Old Maid
In this version of Old Maid, there is no loser. Actually, everyone ends up being a winner which encourages positive feelings and teamwork in preschoolers.
I like “winning” games in preschool because it encourages preschoolers to cheer each other on and help out rather than play for their own gain. Of course, whenever there is a game with no loser, there are also no hurt or sad feelings to navigate, either.
This is not a “cooperative” game, per se, which are fantastic, but close.
So, to play the game, deal out all the cards to the players. It doesn’t really matter if on preschooler ends up with an extra card. And yes, the smaller group you have the more cards each player will have, which is why these card holders come in handy.
Next, invite your preschoolers to make any matches they see within their hand. Lay those matches aside. Each player can keep track of their own matches.
Select a preschooler to go first. That player draws a card from the player to his left.
If the card is a match to one in his hand, he can place the match with the others he is collecting. The game continues to the next player, each player drawing from the player to the left, and continues until all the cards have been matched and one player is left with the run-away gingerbread man card (“old maid”).
What is special about this preschool card game? Well, each card not only have a cute watercolor friendly ghosts on each card also has either an uppercase or a lower case letter on it. So the preschooler’s task is to make letter matches.
Now, matching letters can be difficult, especially if using the entire alphabet at once. So be sure to select only the letters of the alphabet you feel your preschoolers would have the most success with while still getting in lots if letter identification practice.
You might be asking how do you win the game?
The person left with the ghost heart is not the loser! Rather, the preschoolers celebrate for making all the matches in their hand so that the ghost heart could be found!
Halloween Language Arts Activities For Preschoolers
Because this is a set of ghost theme letter cards, there are a lot of fun ways to use them! Here are a few ideas.
- Use the alphabet cards to play a game of concentration.
- Distribute the cards as in the Old Maid game and then play “I have, who has?” Here’s an example, “I have big letter T. Who has little letter t?”
- Use the cards to spell out familiar words.
- Flash a card to you preschooler and have them go on an object hunt for an item beginning with that letter.
- Add some gross motor fun. Tape the uppercase letter cards to the wall and one-by-one give your preschooler a cards and have him race to the wall to make a match.
Halloween Literacy Activities For Kindergarten
These Halloween literacy activities are perfect for preschool and kindergarten! Learning the alphabet, sight words, and more through games and printables is a perfect way to infuse Halloween fun and learning through play.
- Cozy Autumn Literacy Activities for Preschoolers
- 30 Free Halloween Printables for Preschool
- Pumpkin Letter Sorting Activity
- Halloween Printable Emergent Reader
- 5 Halloween Literacy Games for Kindergarten and Preschool
Grab Your Free Preschool Halloween Literacy Activities Here
I say this is an alphabet printable because of all the fun you can have with the cards. You can make this into more than just a game of Old Maid, and it certainly pairs nicely with all your Halloween math activities for preschool, too!
But I have to admit, Old Maid is my favorite way to use the cards! Fill out the form below and the cards will be sent to your email.
Get More Halloween Themed Activities for Preschoolers
These are some fun preschool circle time games and Halloween learning activities for toddlers, too. You can never have enough, that’s for sure! Our pumpkin activity pack and Halloween activity pack are full of ready to print activities and loads of fall fun!
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Pumpkin Activity Pack$5.00
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Halloween Activity Pack$5.00
I’m Sarah, an educator turned stay-at-home-mama of five! I’m the owner and creator of Stay At Home Educator, a website about intentional teaching and purposeful learning in the early childhood years. I’ve taught a range of levels, from preschool to college and a little bit of everything in between. Right now my focus is teaching my children and running a preschool from my home. Credentials include: Bachelors in Art, Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
