Halloween Fun

We ended up giving up on our scheduled History study this week to concentrate on Halloween.  Partially because we ended up with way more activities than I thought and partially because the kids wouldn’t have it any other way.

We started the week with a trip to the Pumpkin Patch for the perfect pumpkins.  More on that here.

Then we did some easy science using a couple of our pumpkins.  This didn’t go quite as we planned but we were able to learn something about measuring (more information here).

We then did a ton of Halloween Crafts.  

We started with a kit of foam pumpkins and masks.  I bought it on clearance after last Halloween and I have been torturing the kids for the last week by leaving it out where they could see it (so I wouldn't forget I had it, the big disadvantage of buying things a year ahead).  The kids had a great time dressing up their pumpkins.  Georgie made his into a game – which pumpkin is different and why?  (the bottom middle pumpkin has no costume on and is a different type of pumpkin than the others).


We made ghosts with folded paper arms and legs. Georgie saw these in the window of a local elementary school when we went to the Homecoming Football game and was eager to make his own.  I don’t have a picture of these but you can see them in the final picture showing all (or at least most) of our crafts.
We also made spiders with folded paper legs.  We drew eyes with yellow crayon and then painted them with watercolors so the eyes stood out.

Granny Franny had given us packages of foam shapes – ghosts, cats, bats and spiders that we decorated using foam stickers, stampers and glitter glue.  Vicki’s favorite by far was the glitter glue.


We made paper plate pumpkins.  I put big dollops of red and yellow paint on their plates and they used paint brushes to swirl it together to make orange.  They then added eyes, nose, mouth and stem.

For our last project, I gave them large sheets of paper, Halloween cookie cutters, a stamp pad and Halloween stampers.   Both kids decided they liked using their hands better.

Our (almost) complete display of Halloween crafts.

We had borrowed a couple of Halloween books from the Library.  The kids loved Halloween Spot-It – an I-Spy book with very busy pictures where you look for specific objects.  At first I thought it was going to be too hard, but they kept wanting to go back to the book and look for more stuff.

We also borrowed The Story of Jack O’Lantern.  This book wasn’t as well received.  It was pretty creepy with talk about death, evil and ghosts (I skimmed through parts of the book instead of reading the whole thing).

For the actual school work we completed this week, check out the Weekly Wrap-Up.