Halloween Tot School

John is 22 months!

This past week we started our month of Halloween/Fall activities that will review shapes, letters, numbers, etc and work on naming different body parts. Kind of a random month! I am basically do lots of Halloween crafts and games and making them fit into some category. :)

Here is what we did!

Cat Shapes
I made these cat shape printables and made three copies of them. I taped each type of cat to the back of a tuperware container and put the rest in a stack. John then sorted them into the correct containers. He really liked it, but it took all of 30 seconds for him to do and then he started trying to tear off the taped cats! So, it seems I needed to make it more challenging for him!


(once again, blogger is rotating my pictures! sorry that you have to tilt your head for this one!)


Candy Corn Letters
I also made these candy corn letter printables for this week. After getting great ideas from The Activity Mom, I made two copies and taped each letter to a paper 'trick or treat' bag. John then had to put the matching letter in the correct bag. He REALLY enjoyed this new way of matching. Some the bags even had treats in them (a little snack!) which was cute. One thing I was really impressed with was John would take the card in his hand and put it up against the cards on the bag to compare to see if it was a match. I also was impressed that after doing this game about two times he could say all the letters from A - I and easily match up all the cards to the correct bag. I now have to go back and make the candy corn letters from J - Z! I am always amazed at what John can do and how quickly he learns. It is so exciting!





Halloween Eraser Sorting
I saw cute Halloween erasers at the Dollar Store. I loved them for John because they are big enough that I am not worried about him choking on them and there were 2 sets of 6 different erasers in each package. So, I bought two packs for John to sort using my pumpkin shaped cupcake pan. (At the Dollar Store I also saw cute Halloween ice cube trays that would be cute to sort into but figured I didn't need to spend more money!) John sorted them twice and seemed to enjoy it. Then I would put some in the wrong spots and he had to fix my mistakes.





Handprint Bats
We made bats using a tracing of his handprints. Well, a close enough tracing- he wasn't really wanting to let me trace his hand so I got it wet from a damp cloth and put his hand on the construction paper. Then I quickly cut that out! As we made the bat we talked about where his hands, belly, head, eyes, ears, and teeth were and where we should put the construction paper on the bat. We also made a second bat picture using Matthew's hands- so cute! John LOVED the googly eyes! He even tried to eat one...after it had glue on it...gross!




Fall Sensory Bin
I saw someone's fall sensory bin (and of course I didn't save the blog but this certainly wasn't my idea!) and bought the material at the Dollar Store: acorns, leaves, pinecones, & gords. I mixed in beans and different pouring containers. He loves playing with the beans! I was so excited because while we were cooking tonight I heard some noise in the dining room- John had pulled the bin off the dining room table and wanted to play with it! Yeah!




Math Midway
Well, this doesn't really have anything to do with Halloween or the fall, but I took John to the Frisco Discovery Center where the Math Midway was on display. We went with some of the other moms and kiddos from our playgroup and everyone loved it! John played with one game the majority of the time and since I had to nurse Matthew while I was there (ugh...not ideal for taking John out!) we didn't see everything. I am going to take him back for sure because it wasn't too expensive and he loved playing with everything. Lots of problem solving activities were there so it was awesome! If you are close to Frisco, TX, you should take your kids there!







So, as usual, we ran out of time for all the things I wanted to do. Here is what was on my schedule but we didn't get around to:

-making foot print ghosts
-making hand print spiders
-making hand print owls.

Time flies when we all take 2+ hour naps in the afternoon! :0



I link up to these parties!