By the middle of October, half of what children talk about is costumes and candy. You can fight that or borrow it. Typing practice is the same skill whatever the words are, so spending two weeks on Halloween words costs nothing and buys a lot of goodwill: a child who would groan at a word list will type “pumpkin” five times for fun.
The lists below are sorted by stage rather than strict age. Type them into any blank document or text box; the point is the hands, not the software. Each stage ends with a TotType game that fits it, for when the list runs out.
Ages 5 to 6: three-letter words
At this age the job is finding letters, so the words are short and every letter counts. One finger is fine. Say the word, say each letter as it is found, then read the word back.
- bat, cat, boo, owl, web
- hat, bag, pie, fog, sky
When the hunt gets quick, put two words together into a tiny sentence: “cat hat”, “bat sky”. For a playful version, the keyboard playground shows Halloween pictures until October 31 (P brings a pumpkin, B a bat), and Key Finder turns finding a letter into a game.
Ages 7 to 8: words with both hands
Seven is when most children can hold a whole word in mind while their hands produce it. Aim for both hands on the keyboard and eyes on the screen rather than the keys. These words are four to six letters long:
- moon, cape, wand, mask, candy
- ghost, witch, broom, treat, trick
- spell, magic, spider, autumn, castle
Type each word twice: once carefully, once a little faster. Words that share letters make good pairs (trick and treat, wand and witch). When the list runs out, Word Ladder climbs from three-letter words to five, one letter of difficulty at a time.
Ages 9 to 12: long words and full sentences
From about nine, the goal moves to longer words, capital letters, punctuation and a measured speed. Halloween is generous here: it comes with hyphens and apostrophes built in.
- pumpkin, costume, lantern, cauldron, haunted
- skeleton, werewolf, midnight, scarecrow, cobweb
- trick-or-treat, jack-o'-lantern, spider's web, Halloween night
And five sentences that use the Shift key, commas, numbers and an exclamation mark:
- The black cat sat on the porch beside a grinning jack-o'-lantern.
- We carved three pumpkins, roasted the seeds and saved one for pie.
- Is that a ghost in the window, or just Grandma's curtain?
- At midnight the owl hooted twice and the bats flew home.
- Our trick-or-treat bags held 42 pieces of candy!
Measure before and after the week with the typing test for kids, which counts words per minute on kid-friendly sentences, and note each day on the printable typing practice log. For something faster, Turbo Type and Keyboard Quest are free typing games for ages 8 to 12.
A ten-minute Halloween session
- Two minutes of warm-up on the home row: asdf jkl; with the right fingers, slowly
- Four minutes on the word list for your child's stage, each word twice
- Three minutes on one sentence, typed three times (for the youngest, the three-letter words in pairs)
- One minute to pick the best attempt and say what got better
Accuracy first, speed second. A word typed right and slowly is worth more than a fast word with two mistakes, because the hands remember what they did, mistakes included. And stop on a good attempt, not straight after a bad one.
In the classroom
The same lists work for a whole class. Put the three lists on the board, let each child pick the hardest one they can type without looking at the keys, and run the ten-minute plan as a warm-up. If your class types on Chromebooks, TotType's classroom plan gives children class links they join with a code, with no accounts, and a live class board.
After October 31
Nothing here is really about Halloween. Swap in autumn words in November or winter words in December, and the same three stages and the same ten minutes keep working. The season only provides the reason to sit down.