Simple DIY Costume Ideas to Celebrate Halloween in Virtual Classrooms

This Halloween will be a unique experience for everyone as we dutifully follow social distancing rules to ensure good health during a worldwide pandemic. For teachers and students in online learning programs, we’ve put together some fun and exciting ideas for your Halloween celebrations in a virtual classroom setting. One of the main traditions as well as attractions of this “spooktastic” holiday is the chance to play dress-up. Instead of buying ready-made costumes like always, this year, why don’t we spend some quality time making our own costumes. Check out our simple DIY costume ideas for Halloween.

5 DIY Halloween Costumes for Kids (and Adults) in Online Learning

Your costume has to look good on-screen when you model it for your classmates in a virtual classroom setting via a video conferencing app. Keeping that in mind, here are some wonderful DIY Halloween costume ideas for teachers and students:

1. DIY Jellyfish Costume: This costume requires only 3 items; an umbrella, construction papers, and streamers. Choose a vibrant color for your jellyfish costume, cover the umbrella with colored streamers and construction papers. Take two circular white papers with black dots in their centers to represent the eyes. Stick the eyes on one side of the umbrella. Lastly, wear a dress in the same vibrant color so that when you hold the umbrella over your head you will blend in with the ensemble. What’s more, you can make many such jellyfish costumes in different colors for a group and call it “a school of Jellyfish”, pun intended.
2. DIY Ghost Costume: Take a white cloth that will cover you completely from head to toe. Put the cloth over your head, mark the areas that cover your eyes, then cut two holes in them. Ensure you can see through the holes clearly. Next, trim the bottom of the white cloth that covers your toes in a crisscross fashion to give it a wavy form when you move. The same goes for the portion of the cloth that covers your arms. Make sure the cloth affords free movement of your limbs to wave/flow around like a spooky ghost. This is the most economical and easy DIY costume one can think of.
3. DIY Pac-man Costume: This costume is inspired by the old maze arcade game of the 1980s. Pac-man mobile game apps are available as well. For the Pac-man costume, wear a plain black T-shirt/top and pants/leggings. Take a yellow chart paper or cloth. Cut a big circle of the paper/cloth. Make half an incision from the right side to the center of the circular paper/cloth to represent Pac-man’s gaping mouth. Stick the circular yellow paper/cloth to the center of your t-shirt/top. Now, for the ghost characters in the game; Blinky, Inky, Pinky, and Clyde. You can wear plain red, blue, pink, and orange-colored T-shirts to represent each character, respectively. Cut the bottom of your t-shirt in a crisscross fashion. As for the eyes, cut two circular white cloths or chart papers with a black dot placed in the center/top/bottom of the white cloths/papers and stick it on the upper chest portion of your t-shirt. Voilà! You’ve Pac-man and ensemble for a solo or group Halloween costume idea.
4. DIY Stick Figure Costume: Wear a plain white onesie or white full-sleeved t-shirt and pants. Cut long strips of black cloth or construction paper to denote arms, legs, and body. Stick the long strips on the sleeves and pant legs. Cut a circular white chart paper to make a face mask. Draw a smiley on the circular white chart paper with a black marker pen; two black dots for eyes and an upward/downward curve for the mouth.
5. DIY Donut Costume: Take a big chart paper, cut the paper to form the shape of your favorite donut with or without a hole. Color the chart paper to represent donut toppings or fillings like sprinkles, jelly, glaze, powdered sugar, etc. Wear a plain white top and leggings. Stick the donut-shaped chart paper to your top; make sure it covers your chest, abdomen, and the upper part of your thighs. Your delicious donut costume is ready!

How to Conduct Halloween Costume Parties/Contests in Virtual Classrooms

There are many ways to make this Halloween interesting for teachers, students, and their families. The traditional classroom activities can easily be carried out in an online learning environment. All you need is a smartphone, laptop, desktop, or tablet with a stable Internet connection.

1. Download a free video-conferencing app on your smart device for setting up meetings and making video calls.
2. Choose a corner in your home to decorate for Halloween with paper bats, spiders, webs, skeletons, etc. Conduct your virtual classroom activity from the decorated corner so that your background will look festive when appearing on-screen. Or, you can choose a Halloween-themed virtual background for your video call for free from your video conferencing app. Or, you can create your own virtual background with some spooky images.
3. Choose a theme for the Halloween costume party, or keep it random, up to you.
4. Conduct a Halloween costume contest and award the best-dressed participants. You can have all the participants vote for their favorites in each award category to make the contest a fair one.
5. There are many free apps and online tools available to make Halloween party invitations. Send out the e-invites to your class with the date, time, and instructions/rules of the contest.
6. Have all the participants model their DIY costumes on camera. At the end of the costume party/contest, teachers can capture screenshots of each student’s costume and put together a photo or video collage to share with the students’ families.

Halloween-inspired online learning activities are both engaging and educational for students. It gives them a break from mundane academic learning. We wish you a safe and happy Halloween!