Halloween

October marks the beginning of our favorite time of year! We pull out all of our Halloween decorations and transform our entire house for a month before we transition to Fall and finally holiday décor. Along with the festive setting in our home, I also begin themed activities to excite our girls and encourage them to get into the holiday spirit. One of their favorite Halloween projects is creating various types of spook-tacular slime! This is an incredibly low prep activity that results in hours of fun sensory play.

The three base ingredients are water, glue, and liquid starch.

Liquid starch can be found in the laundry section of your local store and only costs a couple of dollars. As for the glue, you can use either white or clear glue. White will result in opaque slime, while the clear will be more see through. In addition to the base ingredients, choose any food coloring, glitter or add ins that match the theme! My girls chose orange and purple food coloring, various glitter, googly eyes and our beloved Beaker Creatures.

 

First, empty two, 5 ounce bottles of glue into a bowl. Once they are empty, fill the bottles with water and pour that into the bowl as well. Stir the mixture until it is smooth.

At this point, add in your food coloring. This is the only step you can do this at, so make sure you add enough! As you will see below, our first batch looked very orange initially, but I should have added more food coloring. By the end, it was a faint orange color (but the girls didn’t care).

Pour in any mix-ins – my oldest chose googly eyes and green + purple glitter. Stir until the items are mostly incorporated.

Next, add in 8 ounces of liquid starch and begin to stir. The mixture will begin to turn into a hard blob

.

At this point you can help your child and begin to knead the slime with your hands. If it’s pretty sticky, add in a little more starch. Knead some more and continue adding starch until the slime can be handled easily. It will still have some stick to it, but you should be able to pull it off the table in one piece. Depending on the brand of glue you use, the amount of starch will vary. I’ve found that 8 ounces is always the best amount to start with.

We added in our Beaker Creatures and the fun began! My youngest daughter also created a batch of purple slime from white glue. That batch made it’s way into the party as well.

My daughters will play with slime for hours! We store our slime for a few days of play in a Ziploc bag. If it’s a little sticky, just add some liquid starch again. We hope you enjoy this spook-tacular sensory activity as much as we do! 

Save it for later!

Adam and I are always looking for activities to do with the girls, and there’s plenty of learning and fun to be had this Halloween.  It can be as simple as counting and sorting Halloween candy, drawing a spooky picture, or making a paper plate spider web. The learning is always there – you just have to look for it!

1. Pumpkin Coloring Contest

Get out the crayons, print out this pumpkin picture, and watch your little artist’s imagination come to life! Points for the silliest, spookiest, and most creative pumpkins.

2. Paper Plate Spiderwebs

Fall trees aren’t just full of leaves – they’re also full of spiders! Garden spiders are most active in the fall so you’re likely to see more of their elaborate, beautiful webs in the trees in autumn, too. Join the fun and spin your own spider webs out of a paper plate!

1. Cut the center out of a paper plate.
2. Let your kids color the outer edge of the plate with beautiful fall colors like red, orange, and yellow.
3. Using a single hole puncher, punch 12-14 holes around the edge of the hole.
4. Tape one end of a length of yarn to the back of the paper plate and wrap tape tightly around the other to form a ‘needle’.
5. Demonstrate how to weave the yarn back and forth through the holes to create the web, then hand the plate over to your child.
6. Once, the web is spun, remove the pin from the end of the yarn and tape that end to the back of the plate, too.

Add a pipe cleaner spider for the perfect fall finishing touch – cut four black pipe cleaners in half and twist to create an eight-legged creepy crawly!

3. Frankenstein Fun

Start with a blank sheet of paper, then guide your kids, step by step, to draw Frankenstein’s head. Instructions are below:

1. Draw a large rectangle, short sides up and down, long sides on the sides, to form the head.
2. Add a rectangular ear on either side of the head.
3. Add a zig zag line just below the top of the head to make hair.
4. Draw two parallel lines coming out of the bottom of the head to form the neck.
5. Add the start of another rectangle beneath the neck to form the top of the body.
6. Draw two circles for eyes and two half circles inside the circles to form pupils.
7. Add rectangular eyebrows at an angle over the eyes.
8. Add a rectangular mouth.
9. Using the bottom of the mouth as the base, draw three triangles, then connect the pointed tops of the triangles to the top of the mouth’s rectangle to form teeth.
10. Shape a nose between the eyes and the mouth
11. Once the outline of Frankenstein is complete, kids can go crazy with details – add bolts, scars, etc. Outline the creation in Sharpie, and color him in with crayons, colored pencils, markers, even watercolor paints. You’ll be surprised how differently each of your children’s drawings are!

4. Spooky STEM Sculptures

Put all that Halloween candy to good use, with STEM sculptures! Use candy pumpkins and toothpicks to create STEM structures designed to introduce early math and science principles like gravity, balance, angles, and more. Younger kids can try building a simple tower with a three-pumpkin base supporting a single, floating pumpkin. Challenge older kids to create a taller tower, pyramid, spiral, or spider web!

5. Skeleton Puzzle

This double sided skeleton puzzle not only makes a great Halloween activity, it’s also a great way to teach your kids about the name of bones!  It also makes a great front door decoration to help greet your trick or treaters. 

 

Happy Halloween!

What with all the costumes and candy, Halloween seems like pure, pumpkin-spiced fun. But there’s loads of learning to be had, too! Halloween is the perfect theme for countless educational activities you can do at home with your little ones. So, break out your scissors and crayons and let’s get learning with the smarts & crafts, story starters, and STEM building activities below!

Directed Drawing

Sharpen those listening skills, practice following directions, and sneak in some simple math vocabulary with a directed drawing activity! Start with a blank sheet of paper, then guide your kids, step by step, to draw Frankenstein’s head. Instructions are below:

1. Draw a large rectangle, short sides up and down, long sides on the sides, to form the head.
2. Add a rectangular ear on either side of the head.
3. Add a zig zag line just below the top of the head to make hair.
4. Draw two parallel lines coming out of the bottom of the head to form the neck.
5. Add the start of another rectangle beneath the neck to form the top of the body.
6. Draw two circles for eyes and two half circles inside the circles to form pupils.
7. Add rectangular eyebrows at an angle over the eyes.
8. Add a rectangular mouth.
9. Using the bottom of the mouth as the base, draw three triangles, then connect the pointed tops of the triangles to the top of the mouth’s rectangle to form teeth.
10. Shape a nose between the eyes and the mouth, however you like.

Once the outline of Frankenstein is complete, kids can go crazy with details – add bolts, scars, etc. Outline the creation in Sharpie, and color him in with crayons, colored pencils, markers, even watercolor paints. You’ll be surprised how differently each of your children’s drawings are!   

Spooky Stories

Halloween is prime time for spooky storytelling and writing! Next time you’re in the car, waiting at the doctor’s office, or sitting in a restaurant, try starting a spooky story. Open with something like “The little boy creeped up the front steps and knocked on the door of the spooky, spooky house. When the door opened he saw…” Then pass it on to the person to your left!Elementary-aged kids can actually write their own terrifying tales, with the help of some simple story starters. Give them an opener, like the one above, or ask a question like “If you were a mad scientist, what kind of being would you create?” or “Have you ever heard a scary noise? What did you imagine was making the noise?” Remind your writer(s) to use descriptive language, idioms, onomatopoeia, and personification. Add some pictures to complete these monster-ific masterpieces! 

STEM Sculptures

Put all that Halloween candy to good use, with STEM sculptures! Use candy pumpkins and toothpicks to create STEM structures designed to introduce early math and science principles like gravity, balance, angles, and more. Younger kids can try building a simple tower with a three-pumpkin base supporting a single, floating pumpkin. Challenge older kids to create a taller tower, pyramid, spiral, or spider web! There’s plenty of learning and fun to be had this fall. Sneaking an educational element into your child’s day can be as simple as counting and sorting Halloween candy, collecting leaves for crayon rubbings, or weaving a paper plate spider web. The learning is always there – you just have to look for it!