Here’s some fun and easy activities with a Halloween theme…
~ Tie a white tissue over a round sucker to make mini-ghosts. Use markers to add a face.
~ Go pumpkin bowling, using empty plastic bottles for pins and a small pumpkin for the ball. If you like, make ghosts out of the pins with scraps of white cloth and a tie (like the suckers).
~ Make child sized scarecrows from the kids’ old clothes. Here’s some scarecrows that kids have made. Another way to make an easy scarecrow is to stuff clothes with plastic bags, newspaper or rags and sit the scarecrow in a chair with a pumpkin head. Add a wig or hat to the top and you’re all set!
~ Make paper plate spider webs: Have kids cut notches all around a paper plate. Cut a length of black yarn and have them thread the yarn back and forth between random notches until the plate is covered with a web. If you want to make it permanent, let the kids paint over the yarn with glue. Once dry, the web will be hard and can be removed from the plate. Cut out a spider out of black construction paper to finish it off.
~ Cook dinner in a pumpkin. Good fillings include rice casseroles, mashed potatoes or mixed vegetable casseroles (the pumpkin just cooks up like squash). Alternately, serve dinner or soup in individual mini pumpkins.
~ Here’s pumpkin carving stencils from Hershey, along with instructions.
~ Make your own tape of spooky noises to play on Halloween. Have everybody moan, groan, shriek and more while running the tape recorder. Use it for background noise at supper time and on Halloween night.
~ For very little kids, cut out shapes from black paper (triangles, squares, circles & mouth shapes) and cut a large circle from orange paper tomake a pumpkin. Let them choose the shapes to use for eyes and a nose and glue them to make a pumpkin face.
~ Mix some WASHABLE black tempera paint with a little dish soap and let the kids use their hands to stamp bats on the windows. For each bat, use a round sponge to stamp a body and then use one hand print for each wing (fingers going out). Prepare for a mess. This cleans up easily with a wet sponge after Halloween is over. To make it easier clean-up, take the kids outside and stamp the outside of the windows.
~ Give the kids a couple of rolls of white toilet paper and let them make mummies of themselves.
~ Here’s a great dress up game to do with classrooms or groups of kids. Fill a bag with all sorts of wacky costume parts (wigs, hats, tutus….) and pass it around a circle while playing music. When the music stops, the child must reach in and grab something to put on and then start passing again.
~ Make counting books by folding several sheets of paper together. Let little ones press their fingers on washable ink pads and make fingerprints– one on the first page, two on the second and so on. Show them how to draw 8 legs on each fingerprint to make a spider and add a face, then write the number beneath each.
~ Trace your child’s foot on white paper and let her or him cut it out and decorate it as a little ghost. Cut out lots and tape them up as decorations.
~ Check out the fun Halloween decorations here.
If you have any more to share, please add them! Have a great weekend!
Halloween fun
Cute, cute, and more cute! I’m putting every one of these on my to-do list and letting the house go to h—if that’s what it takes to get to all of them. :o)
And if there’s any toilet paper left over after making mummy kids, I think we’ll TP some of our trees! I don’t know about you, but my rebellious side has always wanted to do that! Guess there’s still a little juvenile delinquent living in me, just screaming to get out. LOL!
~Lonni