Halloween Archives - Page 3 of 4

Halloween Games- Spider Web Frisbee Toss

October 1, 2015 By Deirdre

Today I am going to share with you the second of four backyard fall festival or Halloween games. Yesterday I shared with you a game that had a candy corn theme. Today’s game features spiders on a web.

You start to put together this game by cutting holes into the side of large appliance box. Our box received three circular cut out. Feel free to create as many holes as you like in your box.

Then white duct tape was used to create a web on the side of the cardboard that didn’t have writing. (If your cardboard doesn’t have writing on it, you can choose the either side of it.) At least three of the spider web threads were connected to each of the holes that had been cutout.

Two coffee can lids were transformed into spiders. We added construction paper eyes and legs the lids to create the spiders. You could easily use colored foam or pieces cut from a plastic folder to make the eyes and legs. We just used what we already had a home.

The spiders were attached to the web with duct tape. (I wanted to be able to remove the spiders. It will be easier to store the web game board without the spiders on it.)

We used small frisbees that had spider stickers placed on them to toss in the holes on the spider game. You could easily toss ping pong balls, bean bags or plastic spiders through the holes if like.

We leaned our game against the back fence. You could easily have it hang from a tree limb in your yard if you don’t have fence.

By having the holes at different levels, I noticed the kids had to come up with different ways to toss or fling the frisbees. I loved watching them problem solve.

Here are some other Halloween games I know you will love:

Candy Corn Ring Toss

Boxes and Pumkins

Five Little Pumpkins Lego Idea and Songs

September 29, 2015 By Deirdre

My son loved and still loves the Five Little Pumpkins. We read the book so often when he was little that we both memorized all of the words. Recently I was working with some of my students on a writing assignment using lines from the Five Little Pumpkins. I supplied the subject Five Little Pumpkins. They had to come up with a predicate for each sentence. Many of them said they knew that book or song. Guess what? They shared many different lines with me. ( Some of them their own.)

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I decided to see how many different Five Little Pumpkins songs I could find. We learned the Tiger Tales version of Five Little Pumpkins. Below you will find our version and a few others.

Five Little Pumpkins (The version we know!)

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, “Oh my it’s getting late.”
The second one said, “There are witches in the air.”
The third one said, “But we don’t care!”
The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run and run.”
The fifth one said, “We are ready for some fun!”
Then OOOhh OOOhh went the wind
And out went the lights
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

5 Little Pumpkins

5 little pumpkins sitting on a fence.

The first one said, “Oh my, it’s getting late!”

The second one said, “There are witches in the air!”

The third one said, “Well we don’t care!”

The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run and run!”

The fifth one said, “I’m ready for some fun!”

Whoo–ooo went the wind

And out went the light

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!

Version found on A Matter of Memories

Five Little Pumpkins

One little pumpkin smiling smiling.
One little pumpkin smiling smiling.
One little pumpkin smiling smiling.
One little pumpkin is happy.

Two little pumpkins pouting pouting.
Two little pumpkins pouting pouting.
Two little pumpkins pouting pouting.
Two little pumpkins are grumpy.

Three little pumpkins yawning yawning.
Three little pumpkins yawning yawning.
Three little pumpkins yawning yawning.
Three little pumpkins are sleepy.

Four little pumpkins crying crying.
Four little pumpkins crying crying.
Four little pumpkins crying crying.
Four little pumpkins are sad.

Five little pumpkins laughing laughing.
Five little pumpkins laughing laughing.
Five little pumpkins laughing laughing.
Five little pumpkins are playing.

Version from Super Simple Learning

Five Little Pumpkins and Alternate Verses

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one says, “Oh, my. It’s getting late!”
The second one says, “There are witches in the air!”
The third one says, “But I don’t care.”
The fourth one says, “Let’s run and run and run.”
The fifth one says, “We’re ready for some fun!”
Ooooooooooo went the wind, and OUT went the light,
and five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Alternate version:
…..The second one says, “The moon is shining bright!”
The third one says, “The bats are out tonight!”
The fourth one says, “Let’s run and run and run!

Version from King County Library

It is a lot of fun to illustrate a favorite song, rhyme, or book. We illustrated the song Over in the Meadow with Duplo awhile ago. It thought it would be fun to illustrate the Five Little Pumpkins with LEGO. As each line was read a pumpkin was taken off the fence. The pictures shared in this post show you just what our base plate looked like as we went through the song from our book.

I hope you will share one of these versions of the Five Little Pumpkins with your children. I bet they would love illustrating it with LEGO

Here are some other Five Little Fall Songs and Crafts :

Five Little Crows
Five Little Apples

Five Little Firefighters

Halloween Games- Candy Corn Ring Toss

September 28, 2015 By Deirdre

We recently set up a backyard mini carnival in our backyard. It featured fun games that were similar to the ones we have played at my son’s school fairs and Halloween party games. They each featured a theme or symbol that represents fall. Today I am going to share the first of the three games we played. We called it Candy Corn Ring Toss.

How to Play the Halloween Games:

The goal is to toss each of the colored rings into the area they match on a candy corn made of duct tape. The tossing was done from just in front of the piece of cardboard. It looks like it will be easy, but it can be rather challenging. We decided after several attempts that standing on the side was a good alternative. Children can throw the rings underhand or overhand or fling them like a Frisbee. There really isn’t a wrong way to throw them.

As I mentioned, we tried to be each colored ring onto its coordinating section on the candy corn. For young children you may decide that getting any ring in any section or on the game mat is the goal.

Constructing the Game

Game Supplies

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Large piece of cardboard (We used the side of an appliance box.)
White , Tangerine Orange and Sunshine Yellow Duct Tape
White, orange and yellow rings

Alternative Game Supplies
Instead of using plastic rings you could use white, orange and yellow bean bags. They would be heavier and easier for young kids to throw. You could also use Frisbees, jar lids, or small bags of candy corn in place of rings.

Building the Game Board

The game board is super easy to construct. I simply measured five inches from the top and bottom of the piece of cardboard and mark those spots with a pencil. I then measured the space between the top and bottom area. That distance was divided by three to find the size each of the color areas would be. That number was measured out and marked on the cardboard. Then a long line was drawn from the center of the top mark to the outside edge on the bottom mark. Next the lines that represented each color area were marked off horizontally.. Finally the colored tape was place over the lines I had drawn.

Here are some more Halloween Games:

Spider Web Frisbee Toss

Boxes and Pumpkins

Halloween Crafts- Button Spider

September 4, 2015 By Deirdre

We just loved using button dappers when we did a symmetry painting activity. They were great for painting and looked so cute. I thought it would be fun to create a craft using the same craft items that the dappers used. What craft could we make using buttons and pipe cleaners? After a little bit on thought, I decided we could make spiders. They would be cute too. I was right the button spiders we made to add to our collection of Halloween crafts really ended up being cute.

Let me tell you how to create a button spider. Then I am going to share with you a couple of books that I think the it would be great to have the spider retell.

How to Make Button Spiders

Materials:

- Two pipe cleaners
- Two wiggly eyes
- One large button with four holes in it

Directions:
Cut each of the pipe cleaners in half. That will give your four sections of pipe cleaner.

Thread one section of pipe cleaner at a time through two wholes in the button. Make sure that the length of both of the sections are the pipe cleaner are even.

Hint

We threaded a piece of pipe cleaner in the holes right next to each other. We did this with two pipe cleaner sections. (They made an equal sign on the top of the button.) The remaining two pieces of pipe cleaner were thread through holes that diagonal from each other. (They made an “x” on the top of the button.)

The ends of each of the pipe cleaner sections were bent to make them look like a spider’s feet. You can bend them all at once or one at a time.

Then two wiggly eyes were glued on the top of the button. Yes, I know that spiders have compound eyes. We tried adding a lot of eyes. It was hard to fit them all on the button. It also looked really crowded.

Bringing Halloween Crafts to Life

After making the button spiders, I watched my son play with the spider. He had did jumping up and down. It scurried across the table.

It turns out the button spiders in the right set of hands have some moves. That got me thinking. I decided that it would be fun search for some stories that could bee used with the button spider. This could be one of those Halloween crafts that had multiple uses.

Here are the stories I liked best:

How Spider Saved Halloween

There Was an Old Mummy Who Swallowed a Spider

The Very Busy Spider

This is not a Halloween book. I know some of you don’t do a lot with Halloween.I wanted to find a book you can read to your children that will go with the craft.

If you have another book you think that would be good to have a button spider retell, please share it with me. You can do that my mentioning it in a comment below.

Prepositional Phrases Activity- The Pumpkins Are Here!

October 20, 2014 By Deirdre

Prepositional Phrases Activity- The Pumpkins Are Here!

A fun way to work on prepositional phrases is to find a poem like Pumpkins Are Here (Click on the link to the left to print out a copy of the poem.) that has a number of prepositional phrases in it. Once you have selected your poem, you can come up with an activity that children can do while the poem is being read. If this activity can be used to retell the poem too, that is a bonus.

The links below are affiliate links placed there for your convenience.

Prepositional Phrases Activity

Prepositional Phrases Activity- The Pumpkins Are Here!

We recently put together such an activity using poem I mentioned above The Pumpkins Are Here. Along with a copy of the poem we put out Artificial Realistic Fall Harvest Mini Pumpkins. The Lincoln Logs were used to build a small corral for the pumpkins. As we read the poem together, my son placed the pumpkins in, on, or around the corral to match the prepositional phrase that we had just read.

Prepositional Phrases Activity- The Pumpkins Are Here!

After reading the poem once together, my son read the poem on his own. He moved the pumpkins around to match each prepositional phrase as he read it.

Other Ways to Do This Activity

Prepositional Phrases

This activity would be great to do with a whole group of children during circle time. Children could take turns moving the pumpkins around.
A small group of children could each be given a pumpkin to move around a large corral or small individual corrals. They could do a choral or unison reading of the poem.
Pairs of children could do this activity together. One child could read the poem and the other could display the positional phrases with the pumpkins as they are read to.

Here is a Copy of the Poem:

If you don’t want to download a free copy of the poem The Pumpkins Are Here! , here are the words to the poem.

The Pumpkins are Here!

The pumpkins are here;
The pumpkins are there.
The pumpkins, the pumpkins
are everywhere.

The pumpkins are up;
the pumpkins are down.
The pumpkins, the pumpkins
are all around.

The pumpkins are in;
the pumpkins are out.
The pumpkins, the pumpkins
are all about.

The pumpkins are low;
the pumpkins are high.
The pumpkins, the pumpkins
all say, “Goodbye!”

Prepositional Phrases

Another term for prepositional phrases or words is positional. When my son was in kindergarten, we did several positional words. Here are the activities we did.

Prepositional Phrases

Kindergarten Activity- Exploring Positional Words

Prepositional Phrases

Christmas Ornament Positional Words

What are some other ways to work on prepositional phrases?

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{Awesome} Halloween Activities for Kids

October 18, 2014 By Deirdre

Are you still looking for wonderfully awesome Halloween activities for kids? This is a collection of really awesome Halloween activities for kids. There are crafts, science experiments, learning activities and more. Each was shared last week on The Sunday Showcase.

Please take a moment to visit each of these Halloween activities for kids and then add a few of your own. Your activities you add don’t have to be Halloween related. If you have any kid friendly post that you would like to share, I would love to get to see it.

Halloween Activities for Kids

Lalymom has created a contact paper ghost craft that look really fun. Child can add a wide variety of crafting elements to make a totally unique ghost. Kids will really love building and rebuilding ghosts.

3 Dinosaurs has put together a Halloween activities for kids unit that features free printables, sensory bins and crafts. Everything in this unit is awesome, but her printables are my favorite.

Free Halloween Song and Rhymes for Circle Time have been gathered by Living Montessori Now! It includes 15 videos of Halloween songs and several links to song and rhymes. These are fun to watch and sing too.

The Fingerprint Art- Stamped Pumpkin Patch Craft from Fun Handprint Art are such fun. This is one of those Halloween activities for kids that can get kind of messy.

Dabbling Momma has come up with a really cute candy corn clay flower pot craft that look like is would be really fun to create and display. I love the simplicity of this activity.

The Halloween ghost post created by Study at Home Mama are look delicious. The banana eyeballs look like they would be fun to make too.

What fun this science experiment from Science Kiddo looks to be! It looks at history and science.

I really like this social story from Mosswood Connections. I would be a great Halloween activity for kids or just your child.

Frog, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails has a science experiment that my son is going to love. She walks you through how to create a pumpkin volcano. This is the kind one of those Halloween activities for kids that they want to do again and again.

Here is my favorite post from my blog this week. It is called Spelling Games- Skeleton Bones Spelling.

The Sunday Showcase is hosted on the following blogs:

JDaniel4′s Mom

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Here Come the Girls

Inspiration Laboratories

We each feature different posts that have linked up, so be sure to check everyone out! We’ll also be pinning our favorites to our Pinterest board.

If you are here for the first time please read this informational post on Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas’ site for the full details. Anything kid friendly and/or child centered is welcome! You are welcome to share more than one post. We don’t accept links for giveaways, shops, or downloads for purchase, etc. They will be deleted.

An InLinkz Link-up

Halloween Activities for Kids- Mouse Pumpkin House

October 13, 2014 By Deirdre

Halloween activities for kids like this mouse house activity are great for storytelling times at home or school. It would also be great for a Halloween Party. I have done this as one of a group of Halloween activities with kids. ( I will tell you more about the other activities later.) My students were invited gather around me as I sat in my teacher chair. They were told I was going to tell them a story about a mouse and his search for a house. I had memorized the the Mouse Pumpkin House Directions so, I was able to tell the story to the students as I cut the house out of orange construction paper to create the house.

The students had no idea that I was creating a jack o’lantern. In fact I left the word pumpkin out of the title of the story. They just listened to my words and watched me cutting and tearing sections out of the paper. If I retold the story to the class, they would be in on the surprise. Due to the fact they were hearing it the first time the surprise was still intact. I loved watching them as they watched me.

I thought you might enjoy telling the story and creating a mouse house too. If you click here on the words mouse pumpkin house directions, you can have a copy of the directions and script t use with your children.

Here are some tips for creating your mouse house:

Use thin construction paper or copy paper. It is easier to tear.
Try to keep the paper sideways. It is easier to guess what it is when it is held vertically.
I found it easier to memorize the story, but you could read off the printable if you need to.

Other Halloween Activities for Kids

Here are some other Halloween activities for kids that I have done with my students or JDaniel’s class.

We have decorated small pumpkins with stickers, wiggly eyes, and markers. The kids created creatures and creations. I didn’t take a picture of us creating. I was up to my arms in helping work with wiggly eyes.

One of the other room mothers in my son’s K4 class created the witch hat ring toss for the class Halloween party. She found the activity on Sometimes Creative. She also created the Halloween cans game from Keeping it Simple. You will want to check out both of these post to see how they put these Halloween activities together.

Reading a story book is always are great party idea. Here are my top 11 Halloween books for kids.

Spelling Games- Skeleton Bones Words

October 13, 2014 By Deirdre

Cotton swabs just look a long skeleton bones so, I decided that they made a perfect Halloween themed building tool for Halloween spelling games. We left some of the cotton swabs full sized. Others were cut in half or just below their fluffy ends. My son and I found that we needed three different lengths of swabs to build the words in our spelling games.

We started by building the words on my son’s spelling list. The spelling list was actually on the table when the words were formed. That way we could review the spelling of his words tacitly. We both said the letters as he formed them to add an auditory element to this the first of our spelling games.

Some of the letters are challenging to build. The letter “e” was probably the hardest for either of us to make. It took several attempts, but we finally found a way to build an “e”. The letter “u” gave us some trouble too.

Children don’t have to get the letters formed perfectly. Our letters definitely weren’t perfect. The goal of this and the other spelling games we played was to spelling the words correctly.

Other Spelling Games

Call and Form

One person can call out a spelling word and the other can form it with skeleton bones. The person forming the words will have to have learned the spelling of each of the words or be able to sound them out.

One Starts and the Other Finishes

After review the words that will need to be spelled one person can select a word. That person can form the first two or three letters of the word they have selected. The second person will need to form the rest of the word. After they have completed the word, it is their turn to pick a word and start it.

Other Words with That Sound

Right now my son’s class is working on short vowel sounds. Each week half the words feature one vowel’s short sound. After reviewing the words on his list that feature that short sound, other words with that same vowel sound were explored. If your children are familiar with word families you could ask them to come up with others words in each words family. Following the brainstorming of words the words can be built using the skeleton bones.

As you can see there are a wide variety of spelling games you can using the skeleton bones. This is just a list of a few to get you stared. If you can think of other spelling games you can play, please tell me about them in a comment below.

Here are Some Other Spelling Games

Spelling Games with Mixed Up Words– Spelling words on written on index cards. The index cards are cut so that one letter appears on each section of the card. Each set of mixed up words is hidden under a cup. One at a time a cup is selected and the letters under the cup are unscrambled.

Spelling Activities: Trace and Write– A spelling spelling words are written on printable worksheet and the worksheet is placed in a photo frame. Children are asked to trace the words in the frame with a washable marker. Then they are to write the word themselves beside the word they traced.

Practicing Spelling Words with a Place Mat- Children can practice writing spelling words with washable paint, washable markers, straw sections or cookie cutters on a fun place mat.

Halloween Safety Rules

October 31, 2013 By Deirdre

I shared most of these safety rules last year in a post called Halloween Safety Rules and Ways to Review Them. This post includes a sensory bin and file folder game that I created to act out or review the Halloween safety rules. Both activities require materials that many of you already have a home in your craft closet or toy box. It would be worthwhile to take a moment to visit that post and check them out.

It never hurts to share the Halloween safety rules more than once so, I am sharing them with you again in this post. They have been revised a little and put into Halloween Safety Rules for Kids this year.

The thought was that you could print out the sign if you like and have it up in a place where your family will be able to see and read over a few times. You might even want to have your children explain why they think I put each of the rules on the list.

I bet they will totally be able to figure out why each of them it there. They might even be able to give you an illustration of what could happen if they didn’t follow the rules.

If you haven’t gone over trick or treating safety rules with your children yet, I hope you will take a moment before heading out tonight. If you notice I haven’t included something you think is important, please feel free to add rules to this list. This is just what I came up with.

Make Your Own Halloween Safety Rules

You may have things that pertain to your neighborhood or trick or treating routine that you will want to include. Then feel free to add or subtract any rule that you feel doesn’t apply to your family when you go over the rules.

I hope you have a safe and wonderful Halloween filled with fun, laughter and just a little candy.

Easy Halloween Dessert for Kids

October 29, 2013 By Deirdre

I surprised JDaniel with a sweet Halloween dessert as his afternoon snack last week. He was thrilled to see that he had something special in the fridge waiting for him. It was an easy Halloween dessert to put together for my son. Other children will enjoy it too.

The dessert is made of two layers of kid’s favorites. There was box of vanilla pudding made according to the directions on the box. Orange jello was also made according to the directions on the box and canned peaches were added to the jello.

It took a little while for the pudding and jello to set. The jello took the longest. With JDaniel in school the wait flew by. Had he been home he would have wanted to keep putting his fingers in to them to see if they were ready. As you can see there wasn’t a finger test done on these.

When the jello and pudding were ready, I placed them one layer at a time into a pretty bowl. Between the layer of jello with peaches and the pudding layer I added a few more peaches. I thought it would add a little more texture to the dessert.

After adding the pudding layer, I placed a pumpkin made of Halloween sprinkles on top to dress the Halloween dessert up. How did I get the pumpkin shape? I placed a small pumpkin cookie cutter on top of the pudding and then added the sprinkles. A toothpick was used to move a few of the sprinkles into place.Snack is not usually a sweet dessert, but it was fun to surprise JDanel with this easy Halloween dessert. It was super easy to put together. Maybe I will have him add the layers of the dessert to the bowl himself next time.

You will find more food creations like this Halloween dessert on my Food Creations board on Pinterest.What do your children have for snack after school?