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...