Halloween Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Mr. Pumpkin Head

We decided to have some fun with our pumpkins and dress them up with scary and funny faces. This was a quick and easy activity (my favorite) and my daughter could change the faces all day long if she wanted to.

Materials
pumpkins
sticky felt
scissors
black foam paper
toothpicks
tape

One of our pumpkins was big enough to have a couple of faces!

With the little one, we decided to make a bat pumpkin. We cut the pieces (above) out of black foam paper and taped them onto toothpicks that we stuck into the pumpkin.
(You could also paint your entire pumpkin black to really pull off the "bat" look.
Make sure you use acrylic paint, not tempera.)







Happy Halloween!
(More Halloween games/recipes/activity ideas to come. Stay tuned.)

Homemade Play Dough

There are several recipes for homemade play dough out there; here's one that I liked. It's a "uncooked" type of play dough which makes it quick and easy.
It comes from Trish Kuffner's The Preschooler's Busy Book.

Materials:
1 cup cold water
1 cup salt
2 tsp vegetable oil
Tempera paint or food coloring
3 cups flour
2 Tbsp cornstarch
BowlYour toddler will of course be more than willing to help mix the dough with his/her hands.





If your dough starts to get crusty or fall apart, just add more water.
(this is my daughter's snowman)


And this is her castle.

We didn't add any coloring because I didn't have the energy that day to clean up
more than I had to! We'll have to try again with some more flare next time.

Any good play dough recipes?