Halloween Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

We're going on a BAT HUNT...

I found these glow in the dark bats at JoAnne's Fabric (50% off baby) and came up with a scavenger hunt-type activity for the girls. It may look more involved than it was...the entire thing took me about 15 minutes to set up.

Materials:

1 pkg glow in the dark bats

paper

pen

tape

white board or large paper for riddle

*bat masks!

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I started by coming up with a riddle that I knew wouldn't be too difficult for the girls to figure out:

"Trick or treat, smell my feet,

Hazel and Charlotte are super sweet."

 

Then I wrote the main words onto small pieces of paper that I taped onto the bats. I made a dark "cave" out of our guest bathroom by covering the small window with a blanket so we could see the bats when the door was closed (it was still light outside when we did this activity, so I did what I could to make it dark enough!)

I hid the bats all over the bathroom in reachable, but challenging places.

 Then I had the girls put on their "bat masks" to begin the hunt!

*For the masks, I cut out a long strip of Halloween fabric that fit around their heads and tied in the back. I simply cut out two holes for the eyes and that's it!

Because we chose to do this activity around CRAZY HOUR at 5pm, Charlotte would not hold still for a picture and she ended up sitting out for this activity...Can't win 'em all.

And then the hunt began! I had Hazel come into the bathroom and we shut the door to make it as dark as possible. I let her find all the bats at once and then write out the code with some help on our white board, where I'd drawn the correct number of spaces for the words on each bat.

I helped her sound out the words on each bat, giving her hints such as, "the next word in the riddle starts with the letter T..." until she eventually figured out my fancy code. 

She wrote out each word onto the spaces as she sounded them out.

 And we did have some help from a little Eloise.

Isn't she CUTE?

Ta-da! This would be fun to do with any Halloween icon that you could hide with letters or words for them to decode. We're getting so close to Halloween!

Define: Fun

So I had the opportunity of attending another Power of Moms retreat at the end of the summer and this last one was extra special because it was for COUPLES (and yes, I talked my husband into coming with me!). We both enjoyed it immensely and even my sweet husband had a few pages of notes. We came home with a LOT of great tools to help our family be a happy and highly functional one; they focused on family economy (chores/money system), family legal system (rules and consequences), and family traditions. Now that I'm a certified trainer, I'll be sharing all of this fantastic information at my own workshop. That is to be announced soon...

Anyway, I did write an article for October about the definition of FUN and how it isn't always what I expect it to be. I'd decided to work on involving my kids in housework as a way to teach them and build relationships with them. Keeping in mind that they are four and two, we had a few hiccups and adventures along the way. I write about my experiences HERE in my article which was published on October 2nd.

Last night we made our annual spooky house with graham crackers and way too much frosting. I'll post pictures soon. One more week of nice weather for those of us here in Utah...

Halloween Activities for Preschoolers and Toddlers

I heard this idea of creating a seasonal activity basket and decided to give it a try! I started a fall basket with several Halloween and fall-centered crafts made up of stickers, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, construction paper, felt, pom-poms, magnets, yarn, etc. I found most of my activities at JoAnne's where their Halloween and fall crafts are 50% off! This basket has been a life-saver on rainy afternoons and "I'm bored!" moments.

Some "pre-packaged' activities in this basket include packets that have foam cut-outs of ghosts, pumpkins, turkeys and owls that you put together and glue onto popsicle sticks. There's another that has pumpkins with decorations you add and a magnet that goes on the back. These have been great activities for the kids to do (mostly) on their own while I work on dinner or dishes. All of those were in the seasonal section of JoAnne's.



Here are two Halloween activities I created by using some of the resources in our basket. I used these for "Activity Time" with my two year old this past week:

1. Fill the pumpkins (with skeletons!)

I bought a bag of rubbery skeletons and mini plastic pumpkin "buckets." I gave my two year old a pair of tongs and asked her if she could pick up the skeletons and place them into one of the three pumpkins.

 
Pin It  I added the fact that these skeletons will BITE if you touch them with your fingers.You can only use the tongs to pick them up.



At first, this was a difficult task, but she got better and better as she worked on filling all three pumpkins. This is a great activity for eye-hand coordination and focus!
 2. Pumpkin FacesFor this activity, you need two sheets of felt in black and orange. I cut out several different shapes from the black felt including squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, crescent moons, diamonds, and a half circle. I cut out a large pumpkin from the orange felt.

Then I asked my two year old to help me decorate our pumpkins, using the shapes to create several different faces.


Pin It  As she placed the different shapes in the pumpkin, we talked about the names of the shapes and how they're different from one another.



Here are some of our favorite Halloween books this year: The Costume Copycat


This book is about a little sister who always feels like she is competing with her older sister's "cuter" costume until one year she decides to be creative and come up with her own costume. We found this at our local library and it quickly became a favorite. AND last night my sweet four year old fell asleep with this book in her bed and then THREW UP on it in the middle of the night. I guess it's ours now! The Witch Who Was Afraid of Witches
This is my two year old's favorite book this week which is funny to me because the main "witch" is afraid of her older sisters, who are master witches. This is a story about this young witch who finds her own powers through an unexpected friendship and becomes better friends with her older, scarier sister witches. We're getting close to Halloween! More spooky activities to come...