Baby Harry Potter and Hedwig are here to tell you... It's almost Halloween! Again!
And though it's not quite a week 'til Halloween yet, it is Thursday so for your #TBT from me, here are last year's Halloween Countdown posts! In case you're interested in some inspiration for Halloween-themed play :)
Click on the pics! Each one will take you to the post for that activity.
If you do happen to do any of these crafts or activities and share them, tag me on Instagram @dianapancakes, because I'd love to see it! And if you have your own favorite Halloween activities, do share!
I'm linking up with @playandlearneveryday on Instagram, as well as several other parents of toddlers for a Spooky Play Every Day photo challenge for October! Follow us on Instagram to see all of our daily spooky activities, or even join us in our spooky, silly fun :)
Here are my favorites of the spooky activities we've done so far.
Spooky Sensory Bottles
After much searching through our storage closet I managed to pull out the Halloween sensory bottles I made for the boys last year! For more details, here's the original post from our Halloween Countdown: Spooky Sensory Bottles
Icy Spiders
Calvin has this strange fascination with spiders at the moment. He's a little afraid of them, and he's obsessed with finding them both in real life and in books.So I thought he might enjoy this spider-infested ice, and sure enough - since they weren't real spiders after all - he loved this activity!
And it could hardly have been easier! That morning while he was at school, I filled up an ice tray and stuck a plastic spider into each well. They floated, but I didn't mind them sticking out of the ice a little. That afternoon when Calvin was home from school, I set out a big bowl of water and we started plopping our spidery ice into it. I gave him a scoop and some tongs and just let him explore.
After a while he yelled, "Oh no!! The Spiders!!" And I said, "What about the spiders??"
The ice had melted enough that the spiders were getting free! I thought maybe he was freaking out because he was afraid of the plastic spiders, but then I realized that it was more like he thought his toy had broken. I explained that the ice is supposed to melt, as ice will in a bowl of water at room temperature... and then we had a little science-y discussion about solids and liquids, freezing and melting.
Meanwhile, I gave Henry a small bowl with just two ice cubes and no water (because he would have just poured it all over himself in an attempt to drink the water). He licked the ice a bit, but was generally displeased that what I had given him was not, in fact, a snack.
Glow Stick Bath
We had a busy weekend, particularly Sunday which we spent first at a pumpkin farm, and then at the beach. We ended our Sunday Funday with this awesome, eerie glow stick bath! I had a bunch of glow bracelets that I got at a party store, but you could do this with any kind of glow sticks, glow necklaces, etc. Henry was too pooped from our big day to enjoy the bath, so he went to bed early. Calvin loved it and would only get out when I agreed to let him take the glow bracelets to bed. He went to bed with them stacked up both arms like Rainbow Brite!
Boo-nanas!
For a spooky after-school snack, I used raisins to make ghost faces on Calvin's favorite fruit. The cookies are Halloween Joe-Joe's from Trader Joes. Super cute and super yummy!!
Yesterday we watched the first installment of a 3-night TV documentary series by PBS and BBC called Big Blue Live. Big Blue Live is celebrating and exploring a huge gathering of marine animals in nearby Monterey Bay. They are filming live from Monterey Bay Aquarium, as well as from helicopters and boats out on the bay to see the animals: humpback whales, blue whales, elephant seals, sea otters, sharks and more. It's like a huge ocean animal party that apparently happens every year in Monterey Bay. I so wish we could drop everything and take the boys down there today! We were just there a few months ago for a visit.
On the deck at Monterey Bay Aquarium
Big Blue Live reminded me of this ocean animal theme week we did a while back. Calvin LOVES marine animals. They are probably his favorites, maybe even more than dinosaurs! Here are a few ways we brought ocean wildlife into our home :)
Ocean Sensory Bin
I bought a set of small aquatic animal toys from Target and we made them a little ocean habitat with water and blue food coloring. I don't have a photo of it, but later we even added some small seashells. Calvin liked to pretend the crab was a hermit crab and he would try to stuff it into the seashells.
Squishy Ocean Sensory Bag
This is a zip-lock bag full of blue hair gel with some of the animal toys from our set. So squishy and fun! Henry later destroyed this by biting it... so just be careful!
Ocean Bed
Looks suspiciously like our Space Bed, doesn't it? Yup, we just left the blue sheet on and swapped out the rocket ship and astronaut toys for some ocean animal stuffies.
Some sensory play and some pretend play. We also have a few favorite songs about ocean animals: Slippery Fish, Baby Beluga, and Under the Sea!
Check out Big Blue Live if you have any interest in marine widlife. It's on live tonight and tomorrow on PBS!
This was probably my favorite Tot School theme! We did this space/solar system theme for a couple of weeks back in June. We did a lot of sensory play and pretend play and we worked on learning the names of the planets (plus Pluto!), and a bit about our sun and moon, other stars, comets, and asteroids. I quizzed him today out of curiosity and he can still pick out each planet/dwarf planet (Hi Pluto) correctly when I say the names using his little planet models in the picture above. I was impressed!
We only have one kids' book about space, and now the literacy teacher in me is thinking Why didn't I get more books?! But this one covers the basics and has pretty pictures.
We also watched this little clip from an old Blue's Clues episode (remember Blue's Clues?? It was awesome!) with the song about the planets in our solar system.
Here are the lyrics (*with my own edit to the last line about Pluto):
Well the sun's a hot star
And Mercury's hot too.
Venus is the brightest planet,
And Earth's home to me and you.
Mars is the red one,
And Jupiter's the most wide.
Saturn's got those icy rings
and Uranus spins on it's side.
Neptune's really windy.
And Pluto's really small!
*In fact, Pluto's a dwarf planet -
It's not a real planet at all!
The song really helped him learn the names of the planets.
James also showed Calvin some videos of space shuttle launches and different rocket launches. Calvin had fun counting down with each launch.
Here are some other ways we played around with our space theme and explored our solar system!
Solar System Sensory Bins
For this space sensory bin I ordered these small 3-D Planets and glow-in-the-dark stars on Amazon and found black lentils at Whole Foods. I love love love this sensory bin! I like the smooth feel of the lentils and they're perfect for this solar system scene. And the planets and stars all glow in the dark!
I also had this crazy idea to make an edible space sensory bin... don't ask me why. I can't really remember. Maybe it was the cheddar rockets from Trader Joe's that gave me the idea. Or the solar system cupcakes I made for Calvin's first birthday. Whatever my inspiration was, the result was a little weird, but kind of pretty and it smelled like blueberries.
The blue goo is Duff Blue Suede Cake Mix, which I bought at Target. See, I thought the cake mix would look like blue powder. Silly me. I had to wet it to make the color show. Which is why it's all lumpy and sticky and weird. But it sure smelled nice! Like blueberry cake!
I still had those little white pearl candies left from Calvin's 1st birthday cupcakes, so those were the stars. For the planets, I used Fruit Loops Bloopers cereal, and some small fruits like cherries and blueberries. I couldn't figure out what to use for rings around Saturn, so I wrapped a strip of string cheese around a cherry... ew. I happened to have some green rock candy sprinkles so those were perfect for the asteroid belt, and we also happened to have Saturn peaches at the time so I used one for the sun. Then Calvin played around with making the little cheddar rocket crackers blast off from Earth and fly around to the different planets. He also enjoyed snacking on cheddar rockets and tasting the sugary cereal bits, and I even let him taste the cake mix, which was a big mistake because then all he wanted to do was eat it!!
Space Bed
To turn Calvin's bed into a "space bed," I hung a dark blue sheet over his bed and used a flashlight and a colander to make stars. It was Calvin's idea to use his light-up clock as the sun. He and Henry had fun playing in there with their rocket ship and astronaut toys, and Calvin also wanted Mickey and Donald to go into space with them.
Space Play Dough
I gave Calvin some blue play dough and a bunch of sparkly stuff that in my imagination could be planets and stars and comets and moons, and I let him at it.
Sparkly Space Art
Glitter glue + construction paper + big circle sequins = one of the prettiest art projects Calvin and I have ever made! I'm still obsessed with this sparkly space-inspired art. We just swirled the glitter glue around, stuck the sequins on, and Voila! Masterpiece. Couldn't be easier or prettier!
We did this Tot School theme around the time we went camping at Fremont Peak State Park where we got to visit the observatory and see some gorgeous starry views of the night sky.
I always try to tie our Tot School themes in with real life experiences one way or another, whether it's a trip to the zoo or the Academy of Sciences, or in this case a camping trip with some stargazing.
And now I want to do space week all over again! Let me go get the glitter glue!
I was looking back through my Tot School posts and I realized that I never wrote about the week we did the letter N! It was back around the time of Calvin's surgery in March. I didn't do the whole alphabet in letters-of-the-week, but we did all the letters in Calvin's name, plus just a couple more.
Here are the other posts on the letters in his name:
I had to get a little creative to come up with enough items around the house that started with N. Hence the nametag ;)
Neon Noodles
I picked out some big fat rigatoni noodles because I knew they'd be easy to string onto a necklace. Then we colored them using rubbing alcohol and gel food coloring.
I put a handful of rigatoni into each plastic bag with a few drops of food coloring and a couple of tablespoons of rubbing alcohol. Then the kids helped me shake up the bags!
Once the noodles were covered in color, I spread them out on wax paper and let them dry overnight. The colors did run a little.
Noodle Necklaces
With our colorful noodles, we did a little fine motor practice with stringing to make some pretty neon noodle necklaces!
Making the Letter N
We also used the neon noodles to decorate a big letter N.
And to practice making the shape of the letter N, we used a little playdough. We used a cookie cutter to imprint an N onto the dough, and then I asked Calvin to line up some marbles following the zig-zaggy shape of the letter N. Also fine motor practice :)
So now we have Calvin's whole name! And it's been hanging in our kitchen since March!
#catchingup #betterlatethannever
Last week, despite being very busy and feeling very frazzled, I managed to do some Tot School stuff with the boys. It was a good thing that our theme for the week was fasteners because I was able to rely on some of our Melissa and Doug toys and I didn't have to make anything myself.
Houses with Latches Puzzle
Undo the latch... open the door... see some animal friends inside! Say "Bye bye"... close the door and latch it again :)
Dress the Bear Puzzle
I was impressed at how well Calvin did with this. He can do the snap, the zipper, the buckle on the wrist, and he can thread the lace, but not tie it. He can do the big button with some help.
Lacing Cards
These wooden lacing cards are also by Melissa and Doug toys. I let him work on threading the lace through any hole without worrying about any kind of pattern or order. Great fine motor work for him, and also good for working on concentration and patience :)
Pack for a Hike
We packed for a pretend hike and an indoor picnic on a rainy day. This CamelBak backpack was great for this activity because it has so many different fasteners: zippers, snaps, buckles, and velcro! As we packed our items into the many pockets, Calvin used the fasteners to close the pockets up. Then we pretended to hike along a beach, though we were actually walking in circles around our apartment :) When our "hike" was over, we stopped and undid all those zippers, snaps, buckles, and velcro to unpack our things and we enjoyed our indoor snack picnic.
Our letter of the week was icy letter I! Here's how we Investigated I...
Words with I
Round-up of all the Items I could find with names that start with I.
Ice Play Sensory Bin
Since I was our letter of the week, I took it as an opportunity to let Calvin and Henry play with some ice. I put a bit of water in the bin and added ice cubes, plastic ice cubes, frozen teething rings, James' whiskey stones and a couple of pitchers for pouring. Calvin loved it! For Henry, I gave him an ice pop made of frozen coconut water to gnaw on :)
Ink Stamp I
I have a set of small alphabet stamps, so I pulled out a big ink pad and let Calvin stamp away with the letter I. The small stamp was a bit difficult for him to manage, but that made it a good motor-skill exercise too.
Ice Painting
I added food coloring to water in an ice tray to make some gorgeous jewel-toned ice cubes for painting! I was worried that they'd stain Calvin's clothes so I let him do the ice painting in his birthday suit :) The ice-painted letter I turned out very pretty!
