The week of Halloween is the hardest teaching week of the first term. The class is wired before they hit the door, half of them are running on fun size Mars bars, and whatever you had planned for Tuesday is not going to land. These are six activities that work with that energy instead of fighting it, and they need almost nothing from the press.
Why the Halloween week goes sideways
It is not the children. It is the pile up. Costumes, sugar, a long stretch since the mid term break for some schools and a short scramble into it for others, dark mornings, and an entire culture telling them for a fortnight that something exciting is coming. Add a wet yard and you have a class that cannot sit still and a teacher who is out of road by Wednesday.
The instinct is to clamp down. It rarely works in that particular week, because the energy is not defiance, it is anticipation, and anticipation does not respond to a raised voice. What does work is giving the excitement somewhere to go and then bringing them down deliberately, on purpose, with something they enjoy.
That is the whole idea behind these six. None of them are quiet time in disguise. They use the Halloween theme rather than competing with it.
Start with Samhain, because it is ours
Here is the thing worth saying to a class before you do any of this, and it lands every year.
Halloween did not come to Ireland from America. It went the other way. Halloween grew out of Samhain, the old Gaelic festival that marked the end of the harvest and the start of winter, held on the night of 31st October into 1st November. The Irish for Halloween is still Oíche Shamhna, the night of Samhain. Everything the rest of the world does on 31st October is a descendant of something that started on this island.
Children love this. It reframes the whole week from imported nonsense into something that belongs to them, and it gives you a legitimate hook into history, Gaeilge and wellbeing in the same breath.
It also gives you a line for the settling activities. Samhain was about the turn into the dark half of the year, about slowing down and going inside. That is exactly what you are asking a class to do when you ask them to sit and breathe. You are not interrupting Halloween. You are doing the original version of it.
The six activities
Anáil an phuimcín
The simplest one, and the one that will work with infants through to sixth. Children make a small pumpkin shape with both hands in front of their chest, fingertips touching.
Hands open wide on the in breath, close slowly on the out breath. Four rounds is plenty. The out breath being longer than the in breath is the part that does the work, and the hands are what stops them rushing it.
Gaeilge: Tarraing anáil isteach (breathe in), lig amach go réidh í (let it out gently).
Wellbeing link: Emotional and relational education. Practising a strategy to self regulate.
Ialtóg
Children hold one hand up, fingers spread. With the index finger of the other hand they trace slowly up one finger while breathing in, and down the other side while breathing out. Five fingers, five breaths.
This is the one to keep in your back pocket for lining up, for after yard, and for the child who needs something to do with their hands. It is silent, it takes no space and nobody looking in the door knows what is happening.
Gaeilge: Sciathán na hialtóige (the bat’s wing), go mall (slowly).
Wellbeing link: Emotional and relational education. Reflecting and understanding.
Mindful movement that burns something off first
Straight mindfulness after yard is a losing battle. This one gives them the movement first and then takes it down in stages, which is the only reliable way to land a wired class.
Clear a path around the room or use the hall. Call the creature, they move as it, and you drop the energy one level each time.
- Cailleach: big striding witch walk, arms swinging. Loud.
- Cnámharlach: a rattling skeleton, stiff and jerky. Still loud.
- Púca: a shape shifter, moving in whatever way it likes, but quieter now.
- Taibhse: a ghost, drifting, feet barely leaving the floor. Almost silent.
- Ceo: fog. They slow to a stop and stand completely still wherever they are.
Finish on the fog and hold it for thirty seconds before they sit. The slowing down is the lesson, and doing it in five steps rather than one is why it works.
Wellbeing link: Movement competence, and emotional and relational education together.
Éist
Lights off if you can, blinds down, everyone at their desk with heads down or eyes closed. You tell them there are five sounds in the room and the job is to find all five.
Two full minutes of silence, which feels like a long time and is the point. Then go round and collect them: the radiator, a car outside, the clock, someone’s chair, breathing, their own heartbeat, the lights humming, the wind.
Children who cannot do breathing exercises can almost always do this one, because it gives the busy part of the brain a task rather than asking it to stop.
Gaeilge: Éist go cúramach (listen carefully), ciúnas (silence).
Wellbeing link: Emotional and relational education. Exploring and applying.
For infants, and for any class that needs their hands busy
Cooked spaghetti as worms, dried pasta shells as bones, a bowl of jelly as a bog. Cheap, and you likely have most of it. Children explore one tray at a time with their hands and describe what they feel rather than what they think of it.
The rule about describing rather than reacting is what turns messy play into a mindfulness activity. It pulls attention into the present and out of the countdown to the 31st.
Gaeilge: fuar (cold), te (warm), fliuch (wet), bog (soft), crua (hard).
Wellbeing link: Emotional and relational education. Communicating.
The end of day one
A battery tea light in the middle of the circle, or on the interactive whiteboard if you do not have one. Everything else off. Children watch it and nothing else.
Telling them the mind will wander, and that it is fine, is the part most people skip. Without it children decide they are bad at this within about forty seconds.
Best used at the very end of the day. It is a proper full stop and they go out the door calmer than they would otherwise.
Wellbeing link: Community and belonging, and emotional and relational education.
How this maps onto Wellbeing
You do not need to justify five minutes of breathing to anyone, but it is handy to have the language for the Cúntas Míosúil, and handier again if a principal or an inspector asks.
The Wellbeing Specification for Primary and Special Schools, which brings PE and SPHE together, is built on four strands:
| Strand | Activities above |
|---|---|
| Movement competence | The Samhain walk |
| Emotional and relational education | All six |
| Health education | Puimcín breathing, the bat wing trace |
| Community and belonging | The quiet flame, the Samhain discussion |
The specification does not use the word mindfulness, and it is worth knowing that so you do not go looking for it. What it does ask for is that children “explore and practise strategies to self/co-regulate and effectively communicate emotions”. That is what every one of these is. It also names “Quiet Time” for focused reflection, which is the quiet flame under a different name.
A Gaeilge phrase bank for a calm classroom
Worth having on a card on the desk. These work any week of the year, not just this one.
| Gaeilge | English |
|---|---|
| Suigh síos go ciúin | Sit down quietly |
| Dún do shúile | Close your eyes |
| Tarraing anáil isteach | Breathe in |
| Lig amach go réidh í | Let it out gently |
| Éist go cúramach | Listen carefully |
| Bí socair | Be still |
| Go mall | Slowly |
| Ciúnas, le do thoil | Quiet, please |
| Maith thú | Well done |
What to actually do on the 31st
The day itself is a write off for anything new, so plan for that rather than against it.
- Front load the morning. Whatever real work is happening happens before eleven. After the break you are on borrowed time.
- Costumes on after the first break, not before. A child in a full costume from nine o’clock has nothing left by ten.
- Two calm slots, not one. One straight after the first yard, one at the very end. The single session after lunch never holds.
- Same script every time. Use identical words for the breathing every day of the week. Familiarity is what makes it work by Friday.
- Do not save it for the children who need it. Whole class, every time. The moment it becomes a thing certain children do, it stops working for them.
Questions teachers ask
Do these work with older classes?
Fifth and sixth will roll their eyes at the pumpkin hands, and that is fair. Give them the sound hunt, the bat wing trace and the quiet flame, and give them the Samhain history straight. Older children take mindfulness seriously once you stop dressing it up for them.
What about a child who will not join in?
Let them sit. The instruction is that they do not have to take part but they do have to be silent, which means the rest of the class is not disrupted and the child in question usually joins in within two or three days once nobody is watching.
How long before it makes a difference?
The individual sessions calm the room immediately. The lasting change, where children start using the breathing themselves without being told, takes weeks of doing it daily. Halloween week is a good excuse to start, not the whole intervention.
Do I need training to teach mindfulness?
Not for anything on this page. These are regulation strategies, the same category as a movement break. If you want to go further with it, that is what CPD is for.
Is it alright to teach Samhain in a Catholic school?
Yes. It is Irish history and folklore, and the 1st of November is All Saints’ Day, which is where All Hallows’ Eve gets its name in the first place. The two sit side by side and always have.
Can I use these for Croke Park hours?
Sharing them at a staff meeting is a perfectly reasonable use of collaborative time, and a phrase bank on every desk in the school is worth more than it being on yours alone.
Where the curriculum references come from
- The Wellbeing Specification for Primary and Special Schools, published by the NCCA, which is where the four strands and the quoted learning outcome come from.
- The Primary Curriculum Framework, which sets Wellbeing as one of the five curriculum areas.
Checked on 14th September 2026.
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