Healthy Candy Corn Parfaits

With all the candy and treats floating around the month of October, it's nice to have a healhty snack that is still tasty and Halloween themed! Look no further, than the Healthy Candy Corn Parfaits recipe below. 

    (I got those little serving tumblers in a pack from Party City)

Ingredients:
- Banana
- Butternut squash
- Organic maple syrup
- Dairy free vanilla yogurt, or plain if your kids like that. (Trader Joe's has cultured cocont milk, soy yogurt, and goat's milk yogurt.)

Step 1:
- Bake your butternut squash in the oven. There's some different ways to do this. I put the oven at 350 degrees, slice the butternut squash in half, scoop the seeds out, and then put both halves open side down in about an inch of water in a baking dish. Bake it for about an hour, until it's tender.

In the meantime, you can puree your bananas in the blender or food processor.

Step 2:
- Rinse out/wash the blender or food processor so you can also puree your butternut squash. Mix in some maple syrup to the butternut squash puree to give it some extra sweetness. You don't need to use a lot.

Step 3:
- Put the ingredients in the tumblers or whatever cups you have in candy corn order. Yogurt, butternut squash, then banana puree. Cover and refrigerate for a little while before serving.

Monster Eyes Playdough

I've shared sensory plays, crafts, themed baths, etc. for Halloween. Now I'm going to share a Halloween idea for play dough! Monster Eye's Play Dough!

I suppose you could use any color of play dough, but I chose green and I also had it be our eucalyptus play dough. Eucalyptus play dough is great for the season where colds are going around, it can relieve congestion while the child plays with it. To make Monster Eye's Play Dough you just stick googly eyes on/in the play dough.

Halloween Bath

This is a very simple Halloween bath to put together. It's adorable for the Halloween night wash up or an All Hallow's Eve bath. 

You'll need:
- Yellow food coloring
- Fake bugs, bats, worms, etc. (can be bought in big packs at Dollar Tree)
- Black and orange balloons
- Halloween bowl and/or bucket
- Shaving cream
- Neon purple food coloring
- Make up brush or paint brush

When you fill up the tub you'll need to mix in quite a bit of yellow food coloring to the water to make it look orange. Then you can add in the plastic creatures.

I added an extra Halloween bowl for collecting the creatures in. Then I made some purple bath paint with the shaving cream in the Halloween bucket.

Halloween Cloud Dough

More Halloween sensory play! Fill up a big bin with either homemade cloud dough or a couple boxes of cake dough. Then add in some measuring cups and Halloween fun (candy corns, plastic bugs, Halloween erasers, etc.) 

I also had a nifty little plastic half of a pumpkin thing that my daughter used to make Halloween cloud dough cupcakes with candy corns in them. This could also be done with silicone baking liners.

Caramel Apple Cider Paint

I love making homemade paints. This one was definitely one of my favorites. It was Caramel Apple Cider Paint! It makes beautiful pictures that are scented with an amazing fall smell.

Now, I wasn't measuring so the recipe isn't exact. And it also depends on how much paint you need to make, but it's very easy to figure out. You mix all purpose flour with apple cider to make the paint. If it's too watery you add more flour, if it's too thick you add more apple cider. Then to turn it into caramel apple cider paint you mix in a pack of Caramel Duncan Hines Frosting Creations. You might need to add more apple cider after this step, but maybe not. 

I gave my daughter the paint in a bowl, with some paper and a rubbery paint brush. Any paint brush would work however. 

Fine Motor Pumpkin Painting

There's many different ways to decorate a pumpkin, but have you ever considered having your kids do it in a way that would help them with their fine motor skills? I did last year, and decided to have my daughter paint a pumpkin using q-tips. This helps to prepare children for writing.

All you need is a pumpkin, a plate, some paint, and q-tips. I decided to use a tiny pumpkin for my daughter doing this. It was perfect and turned out very cute! 

Witch's Bath

Throwing together a magical Halloween bath that will delight your child is really not that hard of a thing to do! In this post I am going to share with you how to create a Witch's Bath.

What you'll need is:

- Witch's hat

- Witch's hat's craft foam cut outs (can get them from a pack of Halloween craft foam cut outs from Dollar Tree or cut your own)

- Plastic cauldron

- Shaving cream

- Black, neon green, and neon pink food coloring

- Gentle bubble bath

- Plastic bowl

- Make up brush or paint brush

- Black crepe paper

- Tape

First step is to fill up the tub and add in some neon green food coloring to give the water some witchy color. Then you can tape up some strands of black crepe paper to the wall, and stick the craft foam witch hat's to the tub.

Now, to make the bubbling witches brew this is what you do:

Take the cauldron and fill it up with a little bit of water (from the bath tub faucet) and add in some bubble bath. Then add more running water to the cauldron to help make the bubbles come. Put a few drops of the neon pink food coloring on top of the bubbles and use your hand to make the color go throughout the bubbles. Should look like this.

Now you can make the Black Witch Bath Paint. All you need to do is put some shaving cream into the plastic bowl you've got, then add in a few drops of black food coloring. Mix in with the make up brush or paint brush. I used the paint to write "Witch" on the wall of the tub to add in some more decor and literacy learning.

Halloween Spiders Jello and Literacy Sensory Play

Here's some more Halloween sensory play! This one involves literacy learning. You can use it to teach the alphabet, phonics, and spelling with this jello while having some Halloween fun.

To make this you'll need to prepare a box of orange jello and put it into a plastic bowl. Before you put it in the fridge to set you need to add in some magnetic letters and some plastic spider rings.

I like to make this before bed, and then let it set in the refrigerator all night. Once it's ready you just take it out of the fridge and present it to your kid to play with. We take it outside with an outdoor blanket, or we do it on the kitchen floor on a plastic sheet from Dollar Tree.

My daughter loved this particular sensory play!

 

As she played I pointed out which letters were which since she was not even two yet. This year we're working on what sounds each letter make and putting them together to make short words.

Frankenstein Bath Paint

To make baths near Halloween time extra special there's some things you can do. One thing is making Frankenstein Bath Paint!

All you'll need is:

• Shaving cream
• Neon green food coloring
• Black food coloring
• Little plastic bowls
• A makeup brush or paint brush

Put the shaving cream into the bowls, then add a few squirts of the food coloring into the shavig creams. Use the makeup brush or paint brush to stir in the colors into the shaving cream.

It makes beautiful bath artwork!

Frankenstein Wet Cotton Ball Play

Kids love water play, and most will love wet cotton ball play too! My daughter surely does. I had an idea one day to try to make wet cotton balls look like Frankenstein. I was surprised how wonderful it turned out. 

You'll need:

• A baking sheet
• Cotton balls
• Water
• Neon green food coloring
• Black food coloring
• Small cups

You'll need to take your small cups and fill them with water, and then add in some green food coloring to one cup, and some black food coloring to the other cup. Then one by one dip the cotton balls in the colored water and put them on the baking sheet to make them look like Frankenstein. 

Then show your little one how to grab the cotton balls and squeeze the water out of them!

Halloween Sensory Bowl

Here's a fun idea for a Halloween themed sensory bin that we did in a big bowl. There's so many cute Halloween bowls at stores like Party City and Dollar Tree why not use one as a sensory bin. 

To make the base material I mixed dry split peas and dry black beans together to make a Halloweeny base. Then I added a bunch of candy corns which was kind of the base material also. Additions were:

• Halloween erasers (Dollar Tree)
• Sticky eyeballs (Party City)
• Scary hand cars (Dollar Tree)
• Witch fingers (Party City)
• Black bird (Dollar Tree)
• Sparkly skull (Dollar Tree)
• A few bugs/centipedes (Dollar Tree)

Bloody Hand Painting for Halloween

Halloween is right around the corner and I'm sharing all of our fun Halloween activities that you can use with your kids all throughout October. This was from last year, but we are certainly doing it again this year. My daughter was almost 2 years old here and she loved her bloody hand that she picked out from Dollar Tree! They have them again this year so it won't be a problem for you to get one.

We're always talking about how fun it is to paint with things other than the expected paint brushes and fingers, so here's a new twist on painting for Halloween!

All you need is some red washable tempera paint, some paper, and the bloody hand! Your kid will probably get right to work without you having to give any instruction. I put the paint on a paper plate also. Very fun and perfect for Halloween!

Pretend Play: Eye Doctor

Pretend play is so important for young children. It gets them using their imaginations and it helps them to act out scenarios that they will face in real life so they have lots of practice them. Helping kids to pretend play different types of doctors is a very popular thing to do. The thought is that if they get to inflict what will happen to them they will be less hesitant to have it happen to them in real life. Now, this was last year and my daughter was a good ways away from going to the eye doctor herself, but still lots of fun.

Here you can see she's at her table and she has what she needs for eye doctoring and her patient is getting worked on. She's got the eye chart and the otoscope from her pretend play doctor kit. If you don't have one yet, here's where you can buy the one we have. There's also several pairs of glasses that we use for dress up. They're not actual eye glasses, they're more like protective glasses, shutter shades, and 3D movie glasses. Anything of the sort you have, sunglasses even,w ill work just fine.

To make it more realistic, while my girl was doctoring Minnie she had two other patients in the waiting room. (Stuffed animals or dolls put into chairs nearby).

Doesn't Minnie look so cool with her new glasses?