Halloween Crafts & Sensory Fun

Following on from our Top 20 Halloween Crafts & Messy Play Ideas post we have been getting everything ready for our 1/2 term group messy play session. We've decided to make bottle ghosts, spider webs, & spiders. We will also decorate some paper pumpkins but I'm yet to prep for this! 

I'm collecting & washing lots of bottles ready for our ghosts. We will be filling them with cotton wool then sticking on eyes & mouths that I've cut out of sticky back felt. I'm also saving our milk bottles to make ghost decorations for Josephs party, by drawing on the face with a permanent marker pen.

 We have lots of wool scraps here courtesy of the boys Grandma, so a paper plate spider web was a great way to use some up! I've got a stack of paper plates (large & small) which I have punched lots of holes in, ready for a length of wool to be tied on & threaded around to make a web. These webs look great with small plastic spiders, but i thought the kids would like to make a spider. I love this spider from Red Ted Art so to make our spiders we will be making the body from a ball of black paper (mine was A5). The legs are made from 2 pipe cleaners in 1/2, twisting all 4 pieces together & taping on underneath. I then glued some googly eyes on & decorated with some glitter glue. He looks really cute sat on a small pumpkin, which is where he is living for now :-)

Daniel (3) has been helping me get our sensory box ready for the session as well. We started out by raiding the cupboard for all the lentils, & split peas etc we used to make our Dinosaurs back in the summer, we then added a couple of packs of soup & broth mix that we picked up reduced to clear. In total our box has nearly 2kg of dried goods to make the base. We then added our collection of spiders, bugs, snakes & a small witch. We found these cute mini pumpkin buckets & eyeballs in a £ shop. I then added some co-ordinating pom poms as the boys love these & later on some scoops. Daniel has had lots of fun testing out this box for me! 

Really looking forward to both the messy play session & Josephs birthday party. However my house (&head) is full of to buy/make/do/cook lists, so will be relieved once I have pulled it all off!

x Jo x

Hungry Caterpillar Week @ Messy Play

Oops... just realised that I haven't finished posting about the group messy play sessions I ran in the summer. The next theme I chose was The Very Hungry Caterpillar so that we could cover food, leaves, caterpillars & butterfly's. In the sensory box I popped lots of popcorn, we do have a popcorn maker which made this quite easy, I think I ended up using approx 300g of corn. I then raided our toy kitchen to find all the plastic food that is mentioned in the book & added some scoops & spoons. 

This box was very popular with all the kids, we kept it made up at home the popcorn kept well & still smelt delicious 2  weeks later (though I wouldn't recommend eating any that old, it was OK to play with). 

This week instead painting on the floor I moved it up on to a table so that they could create individual paintings. I was aiming for symmetry butterfly's & sponge circles to make caterpillars. Well the kids had their own ideas and were happy to paint freely, the glitter went down well :-) Joseph (4.5) wanted to make a butterfly so I drew out the shape on half the paper to help him (bottom left pic).

For some floor art I taped some black paper down for chalking. I did have more paper to hand in case they filled it up, but the chalk rubbed away by hand so their was no need. I must remember to do this in the kitchen for the boys on a rainy day!

Using left over coloured pasta from the previous week we made some caterpillars, with pipe cleaners & eyes. This is great for little ones that struggle to thread on to string.

 For the other areas we had:

• Ball pool
• Leaf pool - Selection of leaves and pine cones. I used lots of different leaves including bay & mint to add some scent.
• Button & cotton real threading - which created some nice caterpillars

As usual we had a baby / quiet area, which included the book & a butterfly toy.

At the end of the session I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

x Jo x

For your convenience I have included some Amazon (affiliate) links below

Cotton Reel Threading

We have had our cotton reel set for a little while now. I picked it up from a local charity shop after nursery said that Joseph (4) liked playing with theirs, about 18 months ago. It only came with a piece of string that had tape on the end so I bought some new colour boot laces from a market for 50p a pair & tied a knot in one end.

 I keep these in the kitchen as an activity to keep them busy while I'm cooking dinner. More recently Daniel (2.5) has shown an interest in the cotton reels, and before he could manage to use the lace I gave him a long pipe cleaner, as we used with our pasta threading. The cotton reels are nice & chunky for little hands it is an excellent activity for improving fine motor skills. They can also be used for stacking & colour sorting.

Once Daniel had strung several together he started to pull them along the floor, pretending it was first a caterpillar & then a snake.

You can buy a new Galt Cotton Reel set from Amazon US & Amazon UK, they also make a giant button set which, I think the boys would enjoy so I might get one for Daniels birthday in May.

Pasta Threading

We have a pair of really cute pet rats called Charlie & Lola (both girls) which the boys love to bits. I know rats aren't to every ones tastes however they have so much personality & intelligence its really hard not to fall for them! 

We decided to make some treats for the girls by threading pasta shapes (tubes & wheels) & some cheerios on to pipe cleaners. I threaded 1 cheerio on & then hooked the pipe cleaner around to stop it all falling off. 

 In the past the only threading we have done is with shoe laces, the boys found the pipe cleaners much easier to handle. Joseph (4) enjoyed this but wasn't interested in making a second one, but Daniel (2.5) couldn't get enough of it & ended up making 2. However I think we would have had a whole collection had lunch not been ready! 

Bad Mummy Moment - Yes the boys are in there PJ's at lunchtime (except Daniels trousers, as he'd had an accident) I'm sometimes lazy when know we are going out until the afternoon & want them to be tidy, i dress them after they have eaten!

When the boys had almost filled up there pipe cleaner I twisted it in to a circle. This then made them easy to hang up in the rat cage to nibble on.

Yes rats like to eat dried pasta, but they LOVE cheerios! I know cheerios aren't the best rat food it really is only a treat & they only had a few :-)

I have left all the pieces for this activity in the storage tubs & we will re-visit it soon & might even send some to some rescue rats for Christmas if we make enough :-)

My rats even have their own Facebook page & be sure to check out my Ratties Pintrest Board