Halloween Children's Activities

At Halloween children like doing crafts and pumpkin activities as much as dressing up.

Here are some Halloween children's activities so that your toddler can join in this season's fun.

We'll start off with easy toddler craft activities that preschoolers may like as well. After that there's some children's Halloween crafts and pumpkin activities that are slightly more complex but with help an older toddler could join in with these too!

Toddler Craft Activities

1. Cut some left over wall paper in half long ways
2. Write 'Happy Halloween' in big, chunky bubble or bold writing on one half
3. Cut the letters out while leaving the rest of the paper intact, creating a stencil
4. Paper clip your stencil on top of the other half of the wall paper
5. Place some orange and lime green paint on two plates and find an old sponge. You may want to give your toddler the plates one at a time or the sign would probably turn brown.
6. Either strip your little one down to his nappy (diaper) or pop an old shirt or apron on him
7. Let your child sponge paint to his heart's content, while you slide the paper along so he covers it all
8. When your child's finished, gently peel off the stencil and leave flat to dry

Pumpkin Collage

Here is a pumpkin activity that does not need a real pumpkin unless you have one.

1. Draw a simple picture of a Pumpkin, ideally onto white card, and cut it out.
2. You could involve your little one in collecting orange collage materials such as pom poms, foam shapes, tissue, crepe and other sorts of paper cut into small pieces.
3. Provide glue and let your child create a master piece

Hand-print Spider

When your toddler has completed the spider, you could cut it out and hang it up to scare everyone on Halloween. Children just love this.

Paint just your toddler's palm and fingers black, and do two hand-prints over-lapping on the palm part to make a spider. I just re-apply paint to the same hand to make the second print to save on clean up. She could make finger prints with blue, green or orange to create eyes or stick googly eyes on.

Tip: Before you start, have a bowl of warm soapy water and a cloth handy and once you've painted her hand, don't let go of her wrist until her hand is clean, not even for a second. Oh, I remember the day I found out about the importance of that tip! ;-)

Children's Halloween Crafts

Create a Cat Mask

1. Draw a simple outline of a cat's head (about the size of your child's face) on white card and cut it out. Try to cut out large slitty eyes, the same distance apart as your child's eyes.
2. Provide black paint in a plate and find an old sponge.
   Parenting tip for your toddler: Beware black is the worst for staining clothes, surfaces and even skin. Either pop him in old/cheap clothes or an chunky apron or both. You might like to cover the floor with a plastic mat (the ones for putting under highchairs are perfect) and put newspaper or scrap paper under his picture for an easy clean up. Let your child sponge-paint the cat mask.
3. You or you child could draw a nose and mouth on white paper or card and cut them out too. You could use white straws (art straws are perfect), art pipe cleaners or strips of white card for the whiskers (three on each side looks good). Let your child stick facial features to the cat mask. A toddler version would look rather unique... or you could draw his attention to the details of a cat's head in a picture or a real one if possible.
4. The safest way to make it into an actual mask is to simply tape a ice lolly (popsicle) stick in the middle of the back of the picture so about half of it is sticking out at the bottom. If it's really floppy you could tape another stick to the end of the original one (overlapping) and to the mask. Then all your toddler needs to do is hold the stick. That way he can move the mask on and off his own face himself.

The Appearing Ghost

This is a very simple children's Halloween craft. Let your child draw a ghost with a candle or wax crayons the same colour as the paper. Then encourage her to cover the whole drawing in watercolour paint and the ghost will appear slowly before her eyes. Woooo...

Pumpkin Activities

Scrub a Pumpkin

Toddlers love cleaning and I've even seen 5 year olds fascinated with this simple activity. A good way to set up this pumpkin activity is to place a small towel on the table under the pumpkin. This helps to keep it still (if it's small) as well as catching the drips. Also provide a nail brush and a high sided plate or a shallow bowl with water. The times when I've seen toddlers really loving this activity is when they have initiated the activity so why not have this out and available on a tray for when your toddler wants to scrub?

Pound a Pumpkin

This is an awesome pumpkin activity for letting off some steam. I would recommend this activity to be for 3 year olds and older (even I had a go last year - it's more fun than you'd think!).

You will need a pumpkin, golf tees and a toy hammer (ones that come with toy pegs or a pretend builder set would be good). All you have to do is show your child how to hammer the golf tees into the pumpkin, which is a handy skill to master in itself and a whole lot of fun.

Tip: If you leave the golf tees in the pumpkin, they become impossible to remove, so it is best to pull them out as soon as your toddler tires of the activity. Your toddler will then be able to repeat this pumpkin activity as many times as he wishes or until the pumpkin gets too holey.

I hope you and your have fun with these Halloween children's activities. Happy Halloween!

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