Cognitive Activities

Encourage the children to match similar pairs of pumpkins. Use construction paper to make matching facial expressions for each pumpkin pair. Ask the children what makes each pair different from another. Ask them to describe why one pair matches.

Provide children with orange and black shapes and encourage them to match and sort the shapes and colors.

Encourage the children to place pumpkin cutouts into graduated order. Emphasize the concepts big, bigger, biggest; small, smaller, and smallest.

Sort paper cat cutouts by color or features.

(Teachers, make sure to cut a large variety of different colors and different feature; such as, no tails/tail, long/short whiskers, big/small bodies, etc.)

Provide a cutout of a cat or a pumpkin and a cutout of a fence and have children practice their directional words. “Place the cat on the fence”, “place the pumpkin beside the fence”, etc.

Make halloween playing cards using Halloween stickers.

Make matching pairs of cards. Lay one of the pair faceup on the table and encourage kids to match it.

Dramatic Play Activities

Place real or plastic pumpkins in the area.

Cover the walls with orange and black paper and streamers.

Provide Halloween masks and costumes for children to wear.

Fine Motor Activities

Make pumpkin sewing cards of varying levels of difficulty. Use orange yarn for stitching.

Encourage the children to make Halloween necklaces from macaroni and black and orange yarn.

Make Halloween noisemakers. Give each child two pie tins with holes punched around both edges. Assist the kids in putting dry beans or rice in them and lacing the tins together with yarn.

Gross Motor Activities

Play pumpkin bean bag toss, using a plastic pumpkin pail and beanbags.

Play some Halloween music or spooky sounds and encourage the children to creep, walk and jump like cats.

Give the children a broom to take outside and ride on like a witch.

Divide the children into two groups facing each other 15 feet apart. Provide a simple costume or mask for one child in one group to wear. Have that child run to the opposite group , remove the costume, then another child puts it on. Continue until everyone has had a turn.

Play tape the mouth on the Jack-o-lantern using blindfolds. Point them in the right direction.

Tape a picture of either a witch, bat, cat, ghost or pumpkin on each child. Then give instructions, such as “All witches jump as high as you can.” “All black cats creep slowly in a circle.” “All pumpkins laugh out loud.”

Buy a Halloween plastic door cover(about $1.99). Tape on a wall or door in the classroom. Make some black paper spiders (one for each child) and laminate with clear contact paper. Place a roll of masking tape on the back of each one. Prepare construction paper seeds with an instruction on each one like, “Put the spider on top of the pumpkin.” Place all the “seeds” in a plastic pumpkin and let each child come and pull out a seed, listen to the direction and follow it. Who gets to come up first is up to you, but sitting quietly with your hand raised is simple and can be done by all.

Science Activities

Carve a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern.

Compare canned and fresh pumpkin and pumpkin pie. Encourage the children to smell the fresh and the canned pumpkin, feel the texture, and to taste. Eat a piece of pumpkin pie!

Talk about the characteristics of a cat.

Play a tape of Halloween noises and discuss what is making the noises.

Talk about shadows. Using a flashlight and a sheet, have children stand behind the sheet, or use Halloween cutouts to make a shadow puppet play.

RUB A CHALK GHOST

Cut out a ghost from paper. On one side of the shape rub some colored chalk. Place the shape with the chalk side face-up on the sheet of paper. With a smal paper towel, or tissue, rub from the center of the chalky shape onto the paper. When you have finished rubbing all around the shape, lift it and see what happened!

Some Halloween Activities for Two Year olds

We bring in several pumpkins, different sized, and allow the children to roll them and lug them around outside on the grass. Help the children line them up smallest to biggest.

The children fingerpaint directly on our plastic topped table with orange paint. When the children are finished painting, press pre-cut paper (a large pumpkin shape) on each child’s work to capture the print..

The next day when the pumpkins are dry, have the children glue on a stem precut from green construction paper - any place on the pumpkin is fine. The pumpkins look good displayed along the classroom walls. For vines, I use lengths of green curling ribbon to connect the pumpkins to each other by their stems and add leaves here and there.

Halloween Stories

Clifford’s Halloween

One Dark Night by Edna Mitchell Preston

The Witch Next Door by Norman Bridwell

The Tale of the Black Cat

How Spider Saved Halloween by Robert Kraus

The Big, Big Pumpkin

Witches Four by Marc Brown

Popcorn by Frank Asch

Arthur’s Halloween Costume by Lillian Hoban

The Magic Pumpkin by Lucille Sette

Halloween with Morris and Boris by Bernard Wiseman

The Trip by Ezra Jack Keats

Georgie and the Robbers by Robert Bright