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 

Kids in the Kitchen: Pizza Stuffed Peppers

As some of you may know I am big on kids in the kitchen and I think it's important for kids to learn kitchen safety, and cooking/baking skills at a young age. I'm a firm believer that you should integrate the things that you want to be a part of your children's lives from day one. When my daughter was a baby and I was cooking I would put her in her high chair and let her feel and play with sweet potato peels and things like that, she's always been a part of the kitchen experience. Now that she's older she helps me make several things and can prepare some things on her own.

We made this recipe for pizza stuffed peppers and here's how my daughter who is three and half years old was able to help and do pretty much everything that was needed. 

She washed the peppers by standing on a stool and rinsing them under cold water. I handed her the peppers one by one and took them and set them on a paper towel after she finished.

Then when it came time to cut the tops off of the peppers I took a sharp knife and made a starter cut for my daughter. Then I gave her a butter knife and let her cut the rest of the top off the pepper.

Then I showed her how to use the butter knife to remove the seeds and what not from the pepper, then she took over and did it.

Next it came time to measure out the sauce. I didn't want her to pour it from the jar because there was a lot in the jar, it was heavy, and I didn't want it all pouring out at once. So I gave her the measuring cup and a spoon and showed her the line for how much we needed. She spooned it into the measuring cup until she had the right amount. This is itself is a lesson about the kitchen and life skill of measurement.

This next part some people get really nervous about and just never let their kids anywhere near the stove until they are 12 or older. I want my daughter to know how to properly handle being near a stove, and I of course am always right there with her. It's also just a safety thing for me that I wanted her to learn, she understands what parts are hot and is extremely cautious. And of course everyone knows their own child and not every child is mature enough at three to handle stirring something on the stove without getting burnt. Do not try this with your child if you know they won't take it seriously. This is something we have really worked up to, starting with me holding her while I would stir something (of course nothing that would be popping grease or something like that) and now having her standing on a stool and stirring the things we are making together. This recipe was great for this because these ingredients just needed to be heated a bit and stirred together because it was going into the oven afterwards.

I put the heated mixture into a bowl and then I put a pepper into another bowl so it would stay standing up and gave her a spoon so she could put the mixture into the peppers.

This final picture really shows how rewarding having your kids in the kitchen is. She was so proud of the food she had made when it was done. I have read that picky eaters are more likely to eat things that they picked the ingredients for at the store or helped to make, and my daughter loved this meal. She's not super picky to begin with though.

Toddler Haunted House

Here's another thing we did a couple of years ago at our first Halloween party we had for my daughter and her friends/cousins. It was a big hit for the toddlers. I originally saw the idea for this on another blog, but we totally made this our own.

To make this you would need:
- a big box
- paint
- pencil
- black Sharpie
- purple Halloween lights
- ice pick or something to poke holes into a box with
- hanging Halloween decorations
- do not enter tape and rats, optional

We first had to search for the perfect box, like refrigerator size kind of a box. We found a good one and then we painted it. We ended up getting a box from a family friend who worked at a store and it was a box that wet wipes had been delivered in to the store. So the box said "wet ones" on each side in big black letters which was a little hard to cover completely, so I'd recommend getting a plain box if you have that option.

As for the actual painting of the box I wanted it to look like the front of a haunted house on the side of a box. I first took a pencil and drew where I wanted the doors and windows and things to be, and then I used gray paint to paint the whole side of that box except the spots that I had drawn for other things to go. Then I used yellow paint to paint the windows completely and after that dried I went back with the gray again and painted the window panes and used white paint for ghosts in the windows. I painted the door red, and used some bright orange paint to paint pumpkins by the door and green paint for the stems. I of course painted the tree brown. Once all that paint was dry on the box I used a black Sharpie to add details like bats, spider webs, etc. Plus some more gray paint for the hole in the tree.

I will also add that with being a parent to a toddler I wasn't able to paint this box all at once, especially since parts had to dry before other parts could be done. Don't wait until the last minute to do something like this, I had to do it in several spurts.

Other details I put were "do not enter" Halloween tape and then sat some plastic rats from Dollar Tree by it.

After all the painting was completed I poked holes into the top of the box with an ice pick and then stuck purple Halloween lights into the holes.

I also put some scary skeleton and vampire things I purchased at Dollar Tree and Party City that had strings to hang them from dangling down from the top of the box. I stuck the strings through holes that I had put in the box and then taped them to the top.

My daughter loved crawling through it again and again and she wasn't even two yet. I've posted before about how I think most Halloween decorations are perfectly okay for kids even when they are young and they won't be afraid if you don't make it scary. We make Halloween very fun and my daughter has always loved to pick out spooky decorations because she knows it's all fake.

Spider Themed Halloween Bath

I made this spider themed bath for my daughter back in 2013 when she wasn't even 2 yet. I mention that because I thought it was so amazing how much these themed baths really do help kids with their early literacy skills even at such young ages. When she got into this bath I pointed to the word "spider" that I had written on the wall with bath paint and read it to her and we looked at the letters. Then she, without prompting, took the bath paint and said aloud "s p" as she wrote those letters on the wall. 

To make this bath all you need is

- purple food coloring

- black food coloring

- dollar store shaving cream

- plastic bowl

- make up brush or big paint brush

- craft foam spiders or craft foam to make spiders out of yourself

- plastic spiders and/or plastic spider rings

As you fill up the water you can be making the bath paint. Just squirt some shaving cream into the bowl and use the brush to stir the black food coloring into it. When the tub is about half way full add in some purple food coloring and swish it around to color the water.

After that use the bath paint yourself to write "spider" on the wall of the tub. Set the bowl of paint and the brush on the side of the tub for your child to use. Toss in some plastic spiders/spider rings and get the craft foam spiders wet and stick them to the wall.

Monster Juice Boxes

Last year for our Halloween party we decorated juice boxes to look like monsters. Here's how they turned out!

We used lemonade juice boxes from Trader Joe's but you can use any kind of juice boxes your children or party guests will enjoy.

First you have to remove the straws from the backs and make sure you put them somewhere you won't forget so you can serve them with the straws at the party, or just for fun if you're doing this for just your own children.

Now you'll need:
- construction paper, I used a different color for each so nobody got their drinks mixed up and for presentation
- scissors
- glue
- googly eyes, large and small
- a black Sharpie
- clear tape
- pipe cleaners

1. Cut the construction paper down to the correct size to wrap around the juice box, then tape it together in the back.
2. Plan how you want to do the eyes and then glue them on.
3. Draw their mouths on with the Sharpie.
4. Cut the pipe cleaners down to size for their arms and bend them any way you'd like then tape them to the sides of the juice box.
5. Enjoy your monster juice boxes!