This year he's older and at 19 months is able to do a lot more even though he'd still rather throw the small pumpkins. So here are 4 very easy activities that you can do with your toddler.
Activity #1 Footprint Ghost card
Last week I set up an area in the kitchen and started making these footprint ghosts with my little one. He loves to paint and this is only the second footprint project that we've done. He helped me paint his foot and enjoyed stamping his footprint on this black paper. I made sure to describe what I was doing and used descriptive words as we made these prints. It's a great sensory activity and he kept asking to do more until we finally ran out of black paper. I turned these ghost footprints into a Halloween card for our friends and family. Inside I put a picture of my little guy with a jack o lantern hot air ballon behind him that we took at this weekends balloon fiesta, here in Albuquerque.
Activity #2 Pumpkin collage
We started this project by tearing up some orange tissue paper. I had him help me tear it up in the morning and then we completed the activity in the afternoon. I cut two pieces of contact paper into circles and peeled off the sticky part.
I let me little guy feel the sticky paper and then modeled putting the paper onto the paper. He started helping me and then really got into covering the paper with the tissue paper. He did one whole pumpkin on his own and then half of the second pumpkin before loosing interest.
This was great for fine motor skills, we also talked a lot about textures and colors and sizes as we did this project. I then cut out the black eyes, stem and mouth and added them to the pumpkins. We taped these onto our door under our fall wreath.
Activity #3 Gel Squishy bag
This was a Pinterest inspired Halloween bag. I was looking for Hair gel but ended up using Purell since I found a huge bottle on clearance. I used food coloring to dye the Purell and then added some squishy spiders, google eyes and pompoms into the bag and sealed with duct tape. My little guy loves these gel bags. He's working his hand eye coordination when he lays with them because he tries to move the spider or eyes to a certain area of the bag. I also use lots of words as he uses it, colors, shapes, numbers etc.
Activity #4 Painting Pumpkins
As I mentioned earlier my little guy loves to paint!! I honestly sometimes just give him a wet brush and tell him to paint the patio floor and he enjoys that!! Anyway back to the pumpkins. I used a large plastic square used to put under high chairs for messy eaters and had my little one start painting. I didn't care that he mixed colors, I just let him do what he wanted and I loved watching him look at the colors and pick which color he wanted. It was so interesting to watch him decide which color to use. Towards the end he started finger painting which made this an even better sensory activity. We put some of his handprints at the bottom of the pumpkin. I used some tape to tape off eyes and mouth so that he could paint around them and so the shapes would show once I took the tape off. Here are the finished products.
This activity was a hit!! I'm sure we'll be painting something else tomorrow or even adding darker paints on top of these. I love watching my little guy get into a project, he didn't mind getting dirty and even started painting his hands on his own to make hand prints.
I love watching my baby boy enjoy these activities, I hope you will try some of these activities. I'd love to hear how your little one liked these activities as well. Leave a comment if you try any of these activities with your little one. Happy Fall Ya'll!!
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