Kids have a lot of energy, that’s for sure. Here are some fun activities to help them burn off some of that energy while they learn about Halloween.
We want to bring in the traditional Halloween themes of bats, spiders, monsters, and skeletons. But we also want to make sure that children are learning about nutrition and safety, as well as exploring their creativity by working with pumpkins in many different ways.
- Bats Preschoolers Halloween Activities
Make bats out of construction paper, or by folding paper plates. Cut out wings, eyes, and a mouth, and have your child color in the details. Bats Bats are not blind, they use echolocation to navigate.” Show your preschoolers a video of bats flying and ask them what they think bats might see. Tell them that bats don’t see very well and that they use something called “echolocation” to navigate: they make noises and listen for the sound waves coming back off objects around them. Then have the kids try it: If a bat was flying toward your face, what kind of noise would it make? What kind of noise would it hear coming back from your face? Have the kids try it themselves by making sounds and listening for their echo.
Spider Preschoolers Halloween Activates
Who doesn’t love spiders? Kids love playing with toys, so why not make a toy spider out of pipe cleaners and play with it? Make spiders by using pipe cleaners for legs, and attaching them to a paper plate for the body. Give your child some googly eyes and let him or her decorate the spider however else he or she wants.
Make spider web rice cakes: Rice cakes are a great snack to make ahead of time and take on the go. All you need is a round rice cake and some peanut butter (or another nut butter). Use either a wooden skewer or popsicle stick to get the peanut butter on the rice cake.
Monster Preschoolers Halloween Activates
Halloween is all about monsters. Let your kids practice making scary faces in the mirror and have fun scaring each other. Have your child cut out shapes from construction paper to make a monster. Let him or her glue everything together. Cut out eye-holes on the mask and make sure it fits over his or her head before letting him or her paint it.
Cut out different bones from white construction paper (skulls, spines, rib cages), then get some glue and paint to help your child create a skeleton picture.
Encourage your child to draw pictures of things that are good for them: fruits, vegetables, milk, yogurt, nuts, etc.
Safety Preschoolers Halloween Activates
Talk about safety with your child: what to do if they are separated from you while trick-or-treating (show them a family photo so they know who to look for); what not to eat unless you approve it.
Decorate their pumpkin:
Pumpkins are easy to carve, and can make great decorations for your house. This is an activity that can keep them busy for hours and it doesn’t have to be scary. Decorate your child’s pumpkin in any way they want, it doesn’t have to be a Jack-o-Lantern if they’d prefer it not be. You can even use stickers or paint so they don’t have to touch any of the gooey insides.
Skeletons: Before you start carving your pumpkin this year, show your kids how the inside of a pumpkin is like a skeleton.
Nutrition: Halloween is great because kids get to eat candy! But they should also eat healthy food regularly. Safety:
Halloween safety
Halloween safety is important. Make sure your kids know what precautions they need to take when trick-or-treating.
Ghostly Gumdrop Push: Put a gummy worm and a gummy ghost in front of each child, as well as a popsicle stick. The goal is for each child to push their ghost and worm to the opposite side of the table using the popsicle stick without touching them with their hands.
This is a great activity to help develop fine motor skills and teamwork, since it can be helpful for children to work together on this project.
Jack-O-Lantern Pumpkin Painting: This is a classic Halloween activity that everyone loves! You can give the kids paintbrushes or just let them use their hands to paint—and of course they can add different colors so that no two pumpkins look exactly alike.
Try out some magical science experiments. These experiments will introduce your preschooler to the scientific method in a fun way.
Play musical instruments together. Children love music, and they love making their own music even more and now they can do both at the same time.