BOO!

Halloween is right around the corner, so I thought we’d kick it off with some spooktacular Halloween learning activities! We’ll still be celebrating Halloween this year, but in a Covid-safe way…it’s one of my favorite holidays, so opting out wasn’t an option! (Check out my list of safe trick-or-treating alternatives in my blog post Pandemic Safe Halloween Ideas) Happy Halloween everyone!

–Witches brew sensory play: This was a huge hit- my kids both played with it for about an hour! I filled our cauldron with about a cup of baking soda, then gave them a pan with fake eyeballs, spiders, worms, lizards, frogs, candy corn, and a few containers of vinegar dyed Halloween colors with food coloring. They had a blast throwing in all the spooky ingredients and watching the vinegar make the potion fizz. Then they added some water and just scooped and poured and played with all the gooey ingredients the rest of the time! A towel under the cauldron is a MUST to collect spills! LoL I got the inspiration from Pocket of Preschool then just ran with it regarding ingredients (my husband has a bunch of fishing lures, so they made great gooey additions to our brew!)

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–Jack-o-lantern shape faces: I cut out a pumpkin for each little from orange construction paper and shapes like circles, ovals, squares, and triangles from black construction paper. Then I let them choose shapes to create faces for their pumpkins. We talked about the shapes as they played, and when they were happy with how their pumpkins looked, we glued the shapes down to make jack-o-lanterns! I got this idea on Pinterest from Tamara Taysom!

–BOO! Hand print ghosts: Use your little’s hand prints and white paint to make two ghosts on a sheet of black paper. Add a B in front of them to make the word BOO! We did this on construction paper, but what a cute project to make on canvas and save for a decoration in the years to come! I got this idea from Glued to my Crafts!

–Pumpkin color mixing: I drew a jack-o-lantern face on a Ziplock bag then threw in some red and yellow paint. My little squished the paint around until it was well mixed and his pumpkin was orange! It was a little tricky to mix the paint though- I think if you also throw in some shaving cream it would make it easier, especially if your little is closer to 1.

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–Puffy ghosts: I cut out ghost shapes from cardstock, put some glue on the head and body, then had my little cover the ghost with cotton balls. Then he chose two googly eyes and I helped him glue them on. We added a pipe cleaner for a mouth and voila! Puffy ghost! (My preschooler made one too- he just did it without help…hence the 4 eyeballs hahaha!) I got this idea from Thriving Home Blog.

–Spider ring threading: Both my littles jumped in on this fun fine motor activity! You just poke a straw in a lump of playdough, give your little a pile of spider rings (we got ours at Walmart with our grocery order), and have your little thread the spiders onto the straw. I had to show my youngest how to do it first, but he got the hang of it fairly quickly! If your little still puts things in their mouth, make sure to keep a close eye on them with this activity- mine is pretty good, but I still sat him on my lap as he worked just in case he decided to taste a spider!

–Halloween dot painting: My little LOVES his dot markers, so when I saw these free Halloween themed dot painting printables on The Resourceful Mama I knew they were a must-do! Besides the fact that they’re fun, you can ask your little to put dots in each circle as you point, which is great hand-eye coordination practice!

–Halloween stamping: Walmart has cute sets of Halloween stamps you can pick up with your grocery order right now, so of course I grabbed some and let my little go to town! We counted some as he stamped, but mostly I let him play!

–Supply/shopping list:

• Ziplock baggie
• cotton balls
• dot markers
• cauldron
• spoon
• witches brew ingredients (spiders, eyeballs, lizards, worms, etc.)
• spider rings
• a straw
• playdough
• Halloween stamps