There is something so exciting about the start of fall and the holidays to come! October is here and we starting to get ready for Halloween. The Halloween books and crafts are out and the kids have been busy planning their Halloween costumes–we are in full Halloween mode. That’s why I’m so excited to have Blythe from Education.com back to share three fun Halloween kids activities!
Fall is in the air, and kids all over the nation are getting ready for the scariest night of the year: Halloween! With the spooky excitement of light-up skeletons, scary TV specials, and fun-sized candy, it can be easy to forget that some of the best Halloween memories come from making the holiday special with homemade decorations, handcrafted costumes, and celebratory foods.
We’ve searched through our archives to find some of our favorite All Hallow’s Eve activities to make your house look scary this October. If you’d like to get even more festive, we have tons of other Halloween activities for children on our website, including scary decorations, zombie-themed recipes, and DIY Halloween costumes.
Help set the stage for your creepy haunted house, scary movie night, or trick-or-treat entryway with this spider mobile. Simply form twelve or more spiders out of pom poms, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes, glue them to four strips of stiff cardboard, and use a hole punch and yarn to attach the spider strips to the ends of two crossed sticks. Tie another piece of yarn to the center of the crossed sticks to allow you to hang the mobile.
These spiders look scary on their own, but you can also add some black posterboard cut-outs of bats, ghosts, and witches to turn the decoration into a collection of all things creepy!
Leave cups full of eyeball cake pops around your home to give guests a deliciously gross treat! Start by baking a plain cake by following the directions on store-bought cake mix. Let cool, then crumble the cake and add cream cheese, butter, confectioner’s sugar, and milk until the mix is a clay-like consistency.
Refrigerate the mix overnight and form rolled balls in the morning. Dip the cake balls in melted white chocolate, and add gel icing to make the iris, pupil, and veins. Pierce each eyeball with a colorful straw to serve.
Help your child make a scary Medusa portrait to watch over your house on Halloween. Give your child a piece of posterboard and a pencil, and have him sketch a spine-tingling illustration of Medusa’s head and neck on the lower half of the posterboard. Strip the paper wrapping from a set of six or more crayons, and have your child carefully glue them on Medusa’s hairline.
Lay a thick layer of newspapers on the floor. Tilt the posterboard on the newspaper, with Medusa’s head upside down and the crayons pointing to the floor. Have your child melt the crayons using a hairdryer on the hottest setting. Turn off the hairdryer when the melting crayons drip to the edge of the posterboard, and lay the portrait flat on the newspaper to dry. Once the crayons are hardened, have your child outline and decorate Medusa with markers.
Blythe Tai is a copywriting maven for Education.com’s editorial and marketing departments. She spent two years working in early literacy programs with at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area through AmeriCorps, and has previously taught journalism, creative writing, drama, and music classes with students aged 4-18. Blythe has a BA in English and Music from UC Santa Barbara.
I love these ideas, especially an easy-to-do spider mobile. Thanks for sharing this guest post with Afterschool!
That Medusa portrait is so cool! 🙂