The Theatre Classroom — Halloween

October 3rd, 2012

Happily haunted Halloween activities and exercises

With Halloween just around the corner, you might want to celebrate it in several ways. Last year, I wrote about unscrambling letters to form Halloween words. This year, I would like to share a word search. You could also offer a prize for the first student who completes it correctly in the shortest amount of time. Of course, the prize is candy because what is Halloween without candy!!

Vampire Word Search: find the ghostly words

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bat           bite             blood           claw             coffin          cold

creepy     cruel            crypt             cut              danger        dark

death       doom           drinks           drips           evil              fangs

fate          fear              fright            ghost          ghoul           gloom

gore         grave           grin              haunts         icy               jumps

kill            licks             lips              monster       neck            scared

scream     sleep            spirit            sun              tomb           window

vampire  

As I also mentioned last year, you could extend this activity by dividing your class into groups and having them present several more Jack Prelutsky’s poems from his book Nightmares: Poems to Trouble Your Sleep; I included three beginnings on pages 47 to 49 of The Drama Teacher’s Survival Guide #2; The Ghoul, The Troll, and The Ogre.

If you are not familiar with Mr. Prelutsky’s work, I am including another poem from this collection, The Dance of the 13 Skeletons. The author uses wonderful words — ‘click,’ ‘clack,’ ‘chitter,’ ‘gnarled,’ ‘undulating,’ and ‘chat’ — that your students can vocally enhance, making the poem sound dramatic, dangerous, and/or desperate. Towards the end of poem, you could also go faster and faster and then SILENCE! This may not be appropriate for every classroom, so make sure they are suitable for your school district and community. Happy Haunting!

The Dance of the 13 Skeletons by Jack Prelutsky

In a snow-enshrouded graveyard

Gripped by winter's bitter chill,

Not a single soul is stirring,

All is silent, all is still.

’Til a distant bell tolls midnight,

And the sprits work their will.

For emerging from their coffins

Buried deep beneath the snow,

13 bony apparitions

Now commence their spectral show.

And they gather in the moonlight,

Undulating as they go.

And they'll dance in their bones,

In their bare, bare bones,

With the click and the clack,

And the chitter and the chat,

And the clatter and the chatter

Of their bare, bare bones.

They shake their flimsy shoulders

And they flex their fleshless knees

And they nod their skulls in greeting

In the penetrating breeze,

As they form an eerie circle

Near the gnarled and twisted trees.

They link their spindly fingers,

As they promenade around,

Casting otherworldly shadows

In the silver-mantled ground,

And their footfalls in the snowdrift,

Make a soft, sulfurous sound.

And they'll dance in their bones,

In their bare, bare bones,

With the click and the clack,

And the chitter and the chat,

And the clatter and the chatter

Of their bare, bare bones.

The 13 grinning skeletons

Continue on their way

As to strains of soundless music

They begin to swing and sway,

And they circle ever faster

In their ghastly roundelay.

Faster, faster, ever faster,

And yet faster now they race,

Winding, whirling, ever swirling

In the frenzy of their pace.

And they shimmer in the moonlight

As they spin themselves through space.

And they'll dance in their bones,

In their bare, bare bones,

With the click and the clack,

And the chitter and the chat,

And the clatter and the chatter

Of their bare, bare bones.

Then, as quickly as it started,

Their nocturnal dance is done

For the bell that is their signal

Loudly tolls the hour of one

And they bow to one another

In their bony unison.

Then they vanish to their coffins

By their ghostly thoroughfare,

And the emptiness of silence once more

Fills the frosted air.

And the snows that mask their footprints,

Show no sign that they were there.

But they danced in their bones,

In their bare, bare bones,

With the click and the clack,

And the chitter and the chat,

And the clatter and the chatter

Of their bare, bare bones.