Spider Web Sensory Play

For a lot of kids digging their hands into a messy shaving cream sensory play is really fun! You can do so much with shaving cream from the dollar store, you can make bath paint, do shaving cream and ice in the summer, and in the fall you can even make

SPIDER WEBS FOR SENSORY PLAY!

Just get out a tot tray and squirt some shaving cream right out of the can onto the tray in a spider web shape. Then add on some plastic spiders and/or spider rings. Your kids will do the rest!

Pumpkin Printing

Who doesn't love a good printing craft? I know we love to do apple prints so these pumpkin prints were fun! Only we didn't use a pumpkin, we used a potato cut into a pumpkin shape!
                                      

All you have to do for this activity is cut a potato into a pumpkin shape like the one shown above and then give it to your little one on a fork so they can just hold the fork and do it that way. 

I provided a plate of orange paper and a large sheet of painting paper. Orange paint because we mostly thing of orange when we think of pumpkins. 

This craft turns into a really pretty work of art that you will be able to display in your home all fall long!

Halloween Word Wall

Here's our Halloween word wall!

For this word wall I for some reason really didn't want to see the brown cork of the board like always, so I stuck a black piece of fabric to it first before putting the words up. The words I did on orange paper with a black Sharpie, and then cut out with funky scissors.

The words are:
- Halloween
- October
- Orange
- Ghost
- Spooky
- Bat
- Trick or Treat
- Vampire
- Carve
- Mummy
- Frightful
- Candy
- Spider
- Coffin
- Costume
- Jack o lantern
- Skeleton
- Cauldron
- Witch
- Goblin

Pumpkin Patch Sensory Bin/Small World

I just adore small worlds, I think they are so perfect to get kids wanting to play with some of their dolls or figures or whatever that they might not have played with in a while, or just gives them the opportunity for pretend play in a little setting that often has a scenario or theme already.

For this sensory bin/small world I made it pumpkin patch themed for the fall time. 

I made this for my daughter when she wasn't even 2 yet and now she's almost 4 but I got the pumpkin cut outs at Dollar Tree when the Halloween/Fall things were out. I can't imagine something like that would be too hard to find these days now though, or that it's even 100% necessary to the bin.

What you'll need to recreate a pumpkin patch sensory bin/small world like this is:
- ground coffee
- some Little People or other figures
- some green pipe cleaners
- a fake squash perhaps (Dollar Tree)
- a real small pumpkin
- pretend small pumpkin/whatever else little pumpkin things you might have that you could put into a pumpkin patch themed bin

I have that little pretend pumpkin and "welcome great pumpkin" sign from a Charlie Brown play set we have.

We took this bin outside to make it even more real since pumpkin patches are outdoors, and because this bin can be messy if coffee grounds start flying everywhere. They didn't with us, but some did get out of the bin which. I had it laid out on a outdoor blanket for easy clean up and comfort for Charlie sitting on the deck.

Halloween Water Play

Water play is always fun and it's the perfect thing to keep kids entertained, but near you while you are busy in the kitchen (if you're not including your little one in the process for whatever reason), here's a fun Halloween one we've made. 

My daughter has always loved any and all water play and this Halloween themed one was no exception. I colored the water purple with food coloring, then I added in some plastic spooky things like skeletons, spiders, bats, snakes, and flies. You can find bags of things like this usually at Dollar Tree, Party City, places like that around Halloween time.

She wanted to use the pumpkin scoop with it so I let her of course, and we paired it with a purple bowl with spider webs on it to keep with the color scheme and the theme. Another bowl is almost always needed with water play since kids love to transfer so much. My daughter would scoop some water and things into the bowl, pour the bowl back into the bin, over and over for a little while.

Witches Brew Oobleck

We loveeee messy sensory play and when it comes to Halloween themed messy sensory play we can really get creative and creepy with it.

Witches Brew Oobleck:
Ingredients:
- green oobleck
- purple cooked angel hair pasta
- plastic spiders and/or spider rings
- plastic witch's cauldron

Firstly, to make the green oobleck all you need to do is mix cornstarch with water until you get the right consistency, which is to be able to grab a handful of it but then once you lift it up have it start running off your hand back into the bin, or in this case cauldron. Add water to your corn starch just a little at a time until you get to this consistency and then add a few drops of green food coloring and mix that in.

For the purple cooked angel hair pasta all you need to do is cook the noodles, drain them and then put them in a Ziploc bag and add the purple food coloring and shake it all up until they are coated.

Put the oobleck in the cauldron (if you didn't make it in there already), add in the noodles too and then the spiders/spider ring add ins. This is such a fun sensory play for toddlers because they will love to get to feel all the different textures, preschoolers playing with this will really get into pretend play with it.

Have a Great Educational Fire Safety Week

October 4th through the 10th is Fire Safety Week! With the ideas from this post you and your kids are sure you have a fun and informative week learning about fire safety.

First I like to put up a word wall when we do a "theme" or "unit" in our home school, and we always do our fire safety theme during fire safety week. 

I have "Fire Safety Week" on orange paper as the title and then the other labels in orange as well: "signs, use, and do" as in signs of the fire, what firemen use and what firemen do. There's the "fireman" word that I have up there that I printed from a community helpers word wall download. Then all the yellows are what goes with each label. For signs we have fire, alarm, and smoke. For use we have hat, water, hose, fire engine, ladder, hydrant, extinguisher. For do we have put out, and save.

We checked out some great books for this week from the library, fiction and nonfiction:
-  At the Firehouse by Anne Rockwell
- Fire Safety by Lucia Raatma
- Firefighter Frank by Monica Wellington
- Firetrucks by Peter Brady

The book about Fire Safety is a really great one full of tips to get discussions going with your kids about how you guys can avoid fires in your home, and what to do if there is a fire. This sets the stage to practice fire drills in your home, and the stop, drop and roll.

(new watermark over my old blog name)

There are many more exciting things to do for Fire Safety Week than just have a word wall and read books though. Here is a firefighter sensory bin we have done in the past


One of the very best things you can do is tour a fire station. Call your local fire station and ask if you can arrange a tour for your kids, or make it a group thing and go with a group of parents and children. The tour we went on the firemen were really good with the kids and the tour was informative and fun, then they gave all the kids firefighter hats and coloring books. You can even bake cookies with your kids to bring them to the firemen.

  

Other things to do:
- Shape Firetrucks from Things to Share and Remember, we've made these before!

- Make a firefighter craft from Moms Town Toronto

- Do a fire safety smoke crawl and play some games too like Lalymom 

- Five Little Firefighters Poem and Craft from JDaniel4's Mom 

- Do this F is for Fire craft from I Can Teach My Child