Halloween is fast approaching and the shops are full of spooky tricks and treats. October half term in also calling for fun activities to entertain the kids. With this in mind, I’ve put together a few Halloween ideas to entertain the little ones. The bonus with each activity is the children will be learning whilst they play.

1. POTION RECIPES: A great activity to promote counting. I made a simple recipe and gave Emilia a range of items and coloured water. She loved mixing it up and apparently it was a potion to turn me into a toad. For older children get them to make their own recipes.

2.FOAM SHAPES: Really simple activity using foam sheets. I cut them into a range of shapes and Emilia painted the window with water and stuck them on to make some spooky pictures.

3. SPAGHETTI LETTER MATCH: I made some spaghetti and dyed it green to make it look more disgusting. I hid loads of Halloween themed images in the spaghetti and Emilia had to find and match them to the initial letters. 

4. GHOSTLY SKITTLES: I made a skittle game using polystyrene cups and a balloon filled with rice. The cups were numbered and their positions had the corresponding number of dots to aid in counting and number recognition.

5. PLAYDOH MONSTERS: I made a list of colours for bodies, amount of eyes and amount of arms and Emilia had to make them. This was a fun activity and great for practising colours and counting.

6. TUNNEL OF TERROR: I made the room dark set up the play tunnel with lots of spooky objects. I also hid letters for Emilia to find as she crawled through with her torch.  She matched the letters to spell Halloween. This is a fun game for helping children practise school spellings too.

7. ORDERING GHOSTS: I filled 6 balloons with some left over helium we had. I tied them all different lengths and I also labelled each one with a letter of Emilia’s name. She had to order them in size and to spell her name. We also used them to compare to her height finding the ghosts taller, shorter and the same height as her.

8. FILLED PUMPKIN COUNTING: After enjoying some messy play making a pumpkin, I filled it up with assorted creepy objects. Emilia loved pulling the objects out of its mouth. She counted them and matched to the correct numbers.

9. PLAYDOH PUMPKINS: Playdoh is great for building up hand muscle strength. I gave Emilia a large ball of Playdoh, pipe cleaners and  googly eyes. She had to make 10 pumpkins and thought it was hilarious making different faces. This activity is a great alternative to pumpkin carving for little ones.

10. SPIDER WEB BINGO: I used masking tape to set up a spiders web (honestly this only takes a couple of minutes) . I put a different number in each section but you could swap these for key words, colours, shapes or anything to suit your little ones level. We each had a score board and threw spiders ticking off numbers as we went.

If you play any of these games I would love to see all the fun they have – tag me on Instagram (@myteachermummyandme) and have a great Halloween!