Halloween Sensory Play - Witches' Brew

I had a great Halloween play date planned, but had to cancel at the last minute because my household got sick. Now I have a bunch of activities to try out with O.

O LOVES playing in water and bubbles, so when I saw the idea for a Witches' Brew water sensory activity, I thought it was perfect.

I had some ideas of the types of things I wanted to put in the brew, but I also wanted to keep it cheap. I happened to find some great $1 toys - eye ball bounced balls, sticky skeletons, sticky bugs, plastic spiders, spikes balls, etc. I added a bit of dish soap to the water to create bubbles and used food coloring to make it green. O had a great time (about 30 minutes! YAY!) independently playing with the brew. I gave him and extra bowl, a slotted spoon, a ladle, a measuring cup and some tongs to pick things out, stir and transfer.

We set up with a couple of bowls on the living room floor on top of a towel. You could also use the same idea in the bath tub or sans water just for touching.

Decorating Pumpkins Toddler Style

Way back in September I had the thought to let O decorate a pumpkin with stickers - easy, no mess. Then I found these great felt stickers in the $1 aisle at Target and just couldn't resist. O had a great time sticking all of the eye balls on his pumpkin and is very proud of his creations. We are using them as part of our table center piece and he likes to see them and talks about them all the time.

Fall Decorating

This year I wanted to keep decorations simple, but I LOVE fall...even though it takes forever to get to Houston. I really love decorations that can last through more than one holiday, too.

I found this great idea for color wrapping wheat stalks. It was so easy to do, you can use any colors you want and is a simple/elegant/casual Fall decoration that can last from September through Thanksgiving. (I did mine while binge watching Outlander.)

I had wanted to try my hand at some melted crayon art and saw an idea for melting crayons over the top of pumpkins (somewhere). SO COOL! It was pretty easy, but it took a little while for the crayons to heat up enough to melt, and I had to keep the hair dryer on a low enough speed that it didn't blow the crayon bits off.




Melted Crayon Pumpkins

Materials:
pumpkins
crayons
hair dryer
newspaper/parchment paper
glue (optional)

I started by washing off my pumpkins. I placed the pumpkins on a cookie sheet that I use for crafts, but you could use newspaper or parchment paper. Then I had O help me choose colors, and I broke small pieces off of the crayons and placed them around the top of the pumpkins. For my little pumpkins I only needed about 3 small pieces for each one. (If you want to use glue to hold the crayons in place as they begin to melt, just glue them in place and let the glue dry before proceeding.)

Then I held the hair dyer over the top to heat up the crayons. It might take a couple of tries to get the best setting, depending on your hair dryer. A setting that is hot, but not powerful works best. Once I saw that the wax was melting, I tipped the pumpkins in different directions to get it to drip over the sides.

Let them cool. And you're done!

Play Date: Construction

For September, I decided to do a construction themed play date - partly because my kid LOVES everything digger and construction, partly because I did a construction theme for his birthday and I could re-use some of the stuff.

Activities:

Sand & Digging
I was originally planning to have the kids play outside in our sand play area, but the weather didn't cooperate, so we were inside...with SAND! To keep things under control, I decided to try making kinetic sand.

Here is the recipe I used:
Kinetic Sand
5 c. play sand (you can get it at a local big box hardware store or from your sand box)
3 c. flour
1 c. oil (I used vegetable oil and I added another 1/4 cup)

For my purposes I made 2 of these recipes, put it in an old photo developing tray and mixed it up. When everything was mixed, I added some diggers and trucks, a couple of plastic spoons and forks, and a couple of plastic scoops. I also grabbed some rocks from outside and put them in bowls next to the sand.

Painting with Trucks
I put a few different colors of paint on a cookie sheet lined with foil and got a package of 5 small CAT construction machines at a local store. The kids rolled the construction vehicles in the paint and then on their papers.

Truck Wash
I put a few inches of water in a plastic bin and added a little bit of dish soap. The kids had (new) toothbrushes they could use to scrub their trucks. They love playing in water and bubbles, and this was a great way to wash hands and trucks after sand and paint. Of course a couple of kids attempted to brush their teeth!

Hammering Golf Tees
I got florist foam from a big craft store (cheaper than the styrofoam in the art section) and a package of golf tees. We already had a couple of plastic hammers for the kids to use. I started the foam blocks by lightly pushing some tees in. The kids mostly just pushed tees into the foam rather than hammering, but they really enjoyed doing so. And then they pulled them out and did it all again!

I also put out our other toys related to construction -
-trucks and diggers
-blocks (plastic Mega blocks and wooden building blocks)
-plastic tool box and workbench