Halloween Week for Preschoolers

Well hello there! I am so sorry for the delay in publishing my posts! It feels like it's been forever honestly! I do have a few posts about Halloween activities though. I know it's a bit late for you guys to enjoy them with your children but keep them in mind for next year! :)

Hammering spiders in a pumpkin

Adrian loved this. I asked him to pick up a pumpkin, and sit it on the chair. I then showed him our spider nails and the wood toy hammer. I demonstrated how to hammer in a spider and he then enjoyed doing it himself. I must say he was quite proud of his work and it was a wonderful Halloween decoration. A few people thought they were real. The spiders were purchased through Oriental Trading Company.

Sifting spiders

Making the best out of our sandbox before winter arrives. No laughing but we already received snow this season (yippee said the kids)! This day was mild though so we hid a few plastic orange spiders (Dollar Store) and used a real kitchen slotted spoon for this work. Being the big sandbox fan that he is, Adrian hid the spiders more than once. He has a hard time resisting using his hands for sifting I must admit though. He must be reminded to just shake the sand out though the holes. It was a bit difficult this time as the sand was slightly moist. This idea was adapted from Counting Coconuts'.

Making Halloween colors

We used test tubes for this (found them at Michael's last year). I thought it would be neat since it's a science activity. We also used the sandbox as we do not have a tube stand. We filled each tube with the same amount of water and then, I asked Adrian to squeeze a few drops of red food coloring in one, blue in another and yellow in another. Then, I asked him to make orange, green and purple with the food coloring drops. He actually remembered which colors he needed to use and loved seeing the colors mix in the tubes. He then told me that black was also a big Halloween color and proceeded to make some! :) He loved being able to do this all by himself. You could also put no water in some tubes and mix the colors with the primary ones only but I thought it'd be a bit too messy since tubes have no spouts...

Sorting Halloween colored flower buttons

Adrian is a bit tired of sorting. I think it's a bit too easy or maybe he just didn't care about the buttons...Anyhow, I thought we'd sort by color and then by size but his interest stopped after the color sorting. :( You could also ask questions such as "which is the biggest orange button, the smallest...how many big purple buttons, etc. We just didn't get there. Buttons were purchased at Jo Ann's.

Tweezing pumpkin seeds in a pumpkin pail

I thought it was a cute idea to put the seeds back into the pumpkin! :) It was just challenging enough I think. Adrian is just starting to use tweezer for transferring and the pail's opening wasn't that big so it took much concentration. Overall, Adrian loved the pail and munching on the seeds after they were no longer needed! :) Pumpkin pails were purchased at our Dollar Store.

Cutting up worms

Scissors are always difficult to operate for children. I find that cutting play doh with plastic scissors is the easiest and probably the safest way to learn scissor cutting. As such, this week, Adrian was asked to make long worms with Halloween colored play doh (still haven't gotten around to making my own...). Then, I showed him how to snip that long worm into several small ones. He felt quite satisfied every time one fell on the table. 

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