Weekly Favorites for Halloween 2011

Here are my favorite links that I've seen this year for Halloween. I hope you enjoy them.

1.
Toddler Sensory Activity: Slimy Eyes
A neat sensory sun catcher.

2.
We made paper plate pumpkin pies in preschool
A simple pumpkin themed art activity.

3.
Exploring pumpkin seeds in the preschool classroom
Art, math, sensorial and play with pumpkin seeds.

4.
The Colored Ghosts
A cute ghost story activity.

5.
Golden Shimmer Cloud Dough
This isn't a Halloween activity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It's a sparkley version of cloud dough.

6.
Glow Water
How to make water that glows.

7.
Glow Dough
A glowing version of no cook play-dough.

8.
Hammer Time Pumpkin Style
Hammering pumpkins!

9.
Glow Bottle
A Halloween version of a discovery bottle.

10.
Marble Spider Web and Handprint Spiders
A neat spider themed art activity.

11.
Pumpkin Activities
A list of pumpkin themed activities.

12.
I Spy Magnet Bottles
Here's another activity that isn't related to Halloween, but I thought it was a neat idea.

13.
Halloween Sensory Box
A spooky sensory tub.

14.
Colored & Glittered Pasta Pumpkins for Halloween
A creative pumpkin art activity.

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

Halloween Texture Box

I’ve started to put a few things together for a Halloween texture box. They can sort all the objects by texture; smoothe, rough, bumpy, soft, hard etc. I’ve included a tin foil pumpkin that didn’t come out very well and excuse the pumpkin face in the picture. It’s my Halloween placemat set. I have some plastic spiders, plush pumpkin and ghost, plastic pumpkins and a glass pumpkin and ghost. If you use a glass item, I’d only recommend it for only one child at a time if you think they are ready to be that careful and taking it away after they’ve felt it. It’s definitely not something for a center. I included them mostly for the picture because I don’t have other plastic pumpkins and ghosts, but it is another texture that they could feel and you could talk about how you have to be careful with certain things.





Other things I’d like to put in the texture box include a felt pumpkin similar to this one.


I’ve thought of sand and construction paper pumpkins, real baby pumpkins, pumpkins cut from other fabrics, foam pumpkins, sponge pumpkins etc. You could use ghosts, witch hats, spiders, skeletons etc. Basically anything related to Halloween. I couldn’t find regular cutout patterns, but I think the coloring pages will work for tracing the shapes.

There are a lot of ideas you could add to this. I hope you enjoy it. All the images that aren’t mine, I found on Google Images.

Pumpkin Patch Match

Here’s a Halloween theme match game. You can print them out onto cards and laminate them or do a file folder game with one set glued to the folder and the matching set as separate laminated cards. I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

All images can be found on Google Images and are clipart.

Simple Ghost Puppets

I remembered this idea the other day while I was working with the kids in the art center. They had free choice and were drawing and started making trick-or-treat bags. It made me think of Halloween and ghosts. I had found this activity years ago and hadn't tried it. We didn't have pipe cleaners out, but we had popcicle sticks so that's what I used. I prefer using the pipe cleaners because later, I tried making one at home and with the pipe cleaners, the ghost is more like a puppet. The activity is very simple to do.

Tissue Ghost Puppets

Materials:
Two white tissues,
pipe cleaner,
black marker.


Steps:
1. Have your child lay one tissue open on a table and have her crumble the other tissue into a ball and place it in the middle of the opened tissue.
2. Pull up the corners of the flat tissue and twist the tissue to create a ball head.
3. wrap one end of a pipe cleaner around the neck of the ghost, holding the head in place.
4. Loop the other end of the chenille into a holder.
5. Using the holder, show the child how to manipulate the ghost up and down or to fly.
6. Draw a face on the ghost with a thin black marker.



Here’s the variation on that activity.
using a popcicle stick. I used some white scrap paper to cover the stick for the ghost I made pictured below. I used different colors for the mouth and eyes to try to get the kids interested, but they had finished making some trick or treat bags and moved on to another activity. You could also add googley eyes instead of drawing them on. That would be neat for the ghost because those eyes move.