Halloween candy in bowls on a wooden table | 6 Musical Games & Activities for Fall Piano Lessons

Do your students love Halloween as much as mine do? 🎃

Every week they come to lessons so excited to tell me about their costume plans and the decorations in their classroom or at home.

Several years ago, I started introducing Halloween and fall-themed music and lesson activities during the months of October and November and it has been a big hit.

I choose games and activities for my beginning and elementary students to do throughout the month (or to use in our October studio classes) and I often choose a special piece of sheet music (or a piece to teach by rote) that ties in with the season.

In this post, I’m sharing a list of my favorite teaching pieces and six go-to fall and Halloween teaching ideas and musical activities for music teachers. I hope this inspires your fall teaching this year!

6 Halloween-Themed Activities for Your Music Lessons & Elementary Music Classes

*Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

1. "Trick-or-Treat" Warm-Ups

This is a great way to review scales and warm-up patterns, especially in a group setting!

Have students draw a few warm-up patterns from a bowl (or perhaps a festive jack-o-lantern!). Will they stumble (trick) or master the pattern on the first try (treat)? Of course, some sort of treat will make this challenge all the more fun, so make sure to have some mini-candy bars on hand.

2. Creativity Challenge

My younger students LOVE making up their own pieces each week.

During the month of October, assign your students Halloween-themed creativity challenges. Here are a few examples of composition prompts for elementary piano students:

Make a piece about Halloween using your new warm-up (5-finger scale in A minor).
Make up a song about Halloween using four rhythm patterns (notated on their assignment sheet). Don't forget to write words for your song!
Make a spooky, Halloween version of one of your pieces. (Chrissy Ricker shares some helpful prompts in this free resource: Can You Spook-ify a Familiar Piece?)

Free Printable

Studio Assignment Sheet

A printable assignment sheet for beginning and elementary-age students. Includes: practice log, technic, new and review pieces, musicianship (rhythmic review, aural skills, theory, sight-reading, etc.), and creativity (e.g. make a piece that is ___ measures long and uses ___).

Download

3. Fall & Halloween Rhythm Games

Create a list of seasonal phrases (i.e. "acorns falling from the trees" or "pumpkins are round, orange, and brown") or use this list of Halloween phrases that match a series of set rhythm patterns. Have students read the phrases out loud and choose the rhythm pattern that matches.

Candy Bar Rhythms by Layton Music is another fun variation on this activity (plus, there’s candy involved!).

Another creative, Halloween-themed rhythm game is Chrissy Ricker’s Spooky Rhythm Cards.

Here are a few ways to use this activity during Fall lessons or group classes:

Dictation: Speak a rhythm pattern and have students write down what they hear (or use beat cards to illustrate the pattern).
Composition: Invite students to create and perform their own spooky rhythms. Create a melody to go with it using a 5-finger scale in minor.
Improvisation: Create a rhythm pattern together, then flip over one of the cards and invite the student to improvise something during that beat.
Ensemble: Invite students to create their own rhythms, then perform them as duets. Have students swap places and perform someone else’s rhythm!

4. Halloween & Fall-Inspired Piano Pieces

There are so many great pieces out there for fall and my students love having a "special piece" (usually something not from one of their books) to work on in addition to their other assignments! Here are a few of my favorite pieces for fall:

Early Intermediate

Maple Leaf Rag (Faber & Faber, Level 4 Lesson Book)
Moonlight Waltz (Martha Mier, Romantic Impressions, Book 1)
Falling Leaves (Jennifer Eklund)
Witches and Wizards (Christine Donkin, Celebration Piano Etudes, Level 3)
October Morning (William Gillock, Lyric Preludes)
Autumn Sketch (William Gillock, Lyric Preludes)

Intermediate

The Witch’s Cat (William Gillock, Lyric Preludes)
Harvest Song (Ernteliedchen), Op. 68, No. 24 (Robert Schumann, Celebration Piano Repertoire, Level 5)
Moonlight Reverie (Martha Mier, Romantic Impressions, Book 3)
Shadows at Sunset (Martha Mier, Romantic Impressions, Book 3)

5. Candy Corn Dictation

Such a cute idea from Emily at The Sweetest Melody!

This is another fun rhythm activity for fall lessons, appropriate for all ages, as the rhythms you choose for dictation can be tailored to the individual student.

For example, I might choose duple rhythms with triplets for one student (to reinforce their understanding of triplets), duple rhythms with quarters and eighths for a first-year student, and patterns with more subdivisions for an intermediate-level student.

6. Halloween Improvisation

I love playing duets with my students during lessons, especially ones that we create together in the moment.

The Haunted House improvisation in The Music Tree, Part 2B has the perfect programmatic title for Halloween-themed lessons. (Note: Since this is an improvisation activity, it's really suitable for a range of levels, since the musical material provided is just a starting place.)

I’ve also used this activity in studio classes with students taking turns improvising white-key patterns and black-key patterns.