ghost mud

Ghost mud was the perfect thing to make today, on this last day of October, to celebrate Hallowe’en.  I first read about ghost mud over at Teacher Tom’s.

Grate a bar of Ivory soap and add it to about 1 cup of hot water.  Stir it around a few times until it’s melty and mushy.

Meanwhile, toss a roll of toilet paper to your little people, and challenge them to get all of the paper off of the roll.  Enjoy the giggling and squealing that follows.

Now, just pile all that t.p. into a large bin or basin, and have the kiddos rip it into a million pieces.  How fun is this activity?  And we haven’t even gotten to the “mud” part yet!

Once your t.p. has been shredded, pour the soapy water into the basin and start mushing and mashing everything all together with your hands.  It feels good, and smells great, and you wind up with this awesome slippery, silky, moldable “dough”.

I’m not sure if ours turned out exactly as it should have.  I’ve heard others say it should have the consistency of cool whip.  I don’t believe ours ever did.  It was pulpier than that, but maybe we didn’t rip our t.p. enough.  You know what though?  It totally didn’t matter.

This stuff was awesome!

Hallowe’en match up

Here’s a great little matching activity.  I’m pretty sure I had as much fun making it as the Hooligans had playing with it.

Little Family Fun‘s “pumpkin matching” activity was the inspiration behind this one.  They used a file folder, and scrapbook paper to make theirs.  

As I’ve mentioned before, I have this awesome stash of Wallpaper sample books, that my local Benjamin Moore store was happy to donate to our daycare, instead of throwing them in the trash.  I can’t tell you how much I LOVE having these books to go to, when I need some groovy paper!  I love the colours, the patterns, and the textures.  Some pages are puffy and thick, some are slick, or bumpy or glossy.  And I love that there’s a colour/pattern/texture that is just perfect for almost anything I want to make!

I chose 4 simple Hallowe’en/Fall shapes to use for this activity:  Pumpkins (which kind of look like apples, but hey, apples work for fall too), bats, owls, and fall leaves.

I don’t think there’s really any need for instructions here.  The pictures kind of say it all.

How cute are these?  The Hooligans this activity.  LOVED it.   Big hit.  So simple, and I can see doing this anytime a new holiday rolls around.  Just think of all the Christmas shapes there are to choose from!

 

 

smooshing pumpkins

I can’t believe October is coming to an end already!   We still have so much Hallowe’en crafting to do!  I guess we’re going to have to save some ideas for next year.

Today, we made pumpkins again, using the same paint smooshing technique that we used for our Fall Collages.

To start, I used an oval platter to trace a pumpkin shape onto cardboard.  Then we drizzled orange/rust/peach and green paint onto the oval, and covered it with waxed paper.  

When we made our fall collages, we used Plastic Wrap, but I wanted to try waxed paper this time.  Honestly, I had dollar store waxed paper, and it started ripping soon after we got started, so we peeled it off and went with plastic wrap again.  Much better.

Once the pumpkin was good and smooshed, we used some paper towel to blot up the excess paint.  

I just love this smooshing technique!  It produces really beautiful results!

The Hooligans had a play in the yard with Andrew, who had a P.A. Day today, while the paint dried.

He was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin; wherever he went, they followed.

When they were dry, I cut out the pumpkin shape I’d traced, and we got to work on the faces.  You could use construction paper for this, but I had some scraps of skate-board grip tape that I wanted to use.  It’s like a coarse sandpaper, so the texture is neat, and bonus: it has a sticky back, so the Hooligans peeled off the paper backing and just stuck the eyes, noses and mouths on their pumpkins.

Ta-da….

cotton-ball ghosties

Today’s craft was cute and rather quick.  I saw this idea recently over at Boredom Busting Mommy‘s blog.

I had the Hooligans draw “ghosts” on black construction paper.  All you really need is a large circle.  The older ones drew eyes and noses and mouths as well, but you won’t need to, as they’ll get covered up.

Next, have your little people cover the entire “ghost” with glue.  We used our homemade glue, and it worked well (if I remember, I’ll find the recipe, and come back and share it).

Now, stretch and pull apart cotton-balls and fill in your ghost.  The thinner and wispier you can get your cotton, the better.

Lastly, add a couple of button eyes.

BOO!

paint-print ghosts

We started out doing some ghost-writing this morning.   I got the idea over at Teach Preschool recently, and thought it looked like fun.  The Hooligans really enjoyed it. 

We poured white paint into black styro-foam trays, and orange paint into white trays, and the kids had fun writing with their Q-tips.

That soon turned into painting on black construction paper with the Q-tips.  Miss Mess particularly enjoyed this, and stuck with it much longer than the boys did.  They were eager to get back to their playing, as this was our second craft of the morning.  We’d already made our Tissue Mummies.  One craft is usually all that they have the patience for, but it was cold and rainy this morning, and we were stuck inside, so I was kind of pushing my luck.  Anyway, Miss Mess worked away happily, until she was satisfied with her work.  

When she finished, I called the boys back, and handed out smaller pieces of black construction paper so they could make prints with the left-over paint. (Forgive my blurry pics today, I’m playing with the settings on my new DSLR camera, and clearly, I am in need of some photography classes!)

They just pressed their paper into the paint tray, and lifted it off to reveal a “print’.  And, whaddaya know?

The prints looked like they would make some fine, little ghosties, so we let them dry, and added some button-eyes!

Cute, huh?

tissue paper mummies

I’ve seen so many adorable mummy craft ideas floating around out there, so this morning we decided to whip up some of our own.  

First, to strengthen the toilet paper tube, I inserted one tube into another.  It just makes the tube a little less flimsy.

I cut a sheet of white tissue paper into long strips and the Hooligans wrapped those around toilet paper tubes.  We used a bit of tape to secure the tissue to the tube.

Then we wrapped some white wool around the tube. 

Glue on a couple of googly eyes, and you’re done!  ( I apologize for the blurriness of some of the pics – I still have a lot to learn when it comes to my new camera).

How easy was that?  Aren’t they sweet?

monster hands

 

I was looking at the pictures the fall trees that we made from arm and hand tracings, and it gave me the idea for the craft that we did today:  Monster Hands!

I mentioned a while back that the local paint shop gave us some expired wall-paper sample books.  If you can get your hands on a book or two for yourself, do it!  I just asked, and the store manager happily handed FIVE books over to me.  He said they just throw them out once they become outdated.

Wallpaper samples are AWESOME for crafting with, and beat the pants off paying for pricey scrap-book paper when it comes to kid’s crafts.

We chose some nifty green samples to trace hands and arms onto.

The Hooligans then glued fingernails onto the hands.  I cut the red fingernails from craft foam, and I used a styrofoam meat tray for the black ones.

Then we used various lentils to decorate the arms with “warts”.

Creepy?

Oh yeah!

Jack-o-lanterns!

We crafted up some jack-o-lanterns the other day.  They were really easy to make, and a lot of fun.  

I used a black marker to draw a large pumpkin shape on some white cardboard, and set out some orange paint.  See the paint in the baggie?   Put your paint in a sandwich bag and there’s no messy jar to wash.  Any leftover paint gets zipped up and kept for next time!  I borrowed that brilliant idea from Exploring the Outdoor Classroom (pop over to see more super tips for organizing your play space).

While the Hooligans were painting, I talked about trying to stay inside the lines, which can be challenging for young ones.  They did a great job.  I also encouraged them to try to cover all the white bits as the young ones tend to keep globbing the paint onto the center of their work.  I ended up cutting the pumpkins out, so painting inside the lines really wasn’t important, but it was a good exercise anyway.

While the paint dried, we worked on the faces.  I feel it’s important to let them do as much as possible on their own, but I had the feeling that asking them to cut out eyes, noses, and mouths, was a bit much to expect from them, so I asked them to draw the shapes on black paper with a light coloured crayon, and I cut them out, following their lines.  

Then I cut strips of white paper for them, and they used the scissors to chop those strips up into teeth.

Glue it all together, and…..Ta-da….

Aren’t these cute?!!

golf-ball webs and finger-spiders

I’ve had this one in mind ever since we did our fall colour golf-ball paintings.  You can see the basic instructions here.

Today, we did some more painting with golf-balls, using Hallowe’en colours (green, orange & purple) to make our “webs”.

We followed that up with some hand-tracing to make our spiders.  The Hooligans glued eyes on their spiders, and we punched a hole and added some yarn to make a piece of web for the spider to hang from.  

We attached the yarn to the back of the painting with some tape, and… voila!

So cute!  So easy!

a spooky sensory bin

With Hallowe’en approaching, I’ve been itching to change-up our sensory bin.  The Hooligans had a lot of fun with our fall bin, and played with it many times through-out September and October, but I “retired” it this past weekend.  Actually, I picked it apart and used most of it to create an awesome table-scape for our Thanksgiving Feast, which we hosted Sunday at our house.

In case you missed it, this is what our fall bin looked like:

and this is what it looked like in its second life, spilling across my dining room table:

I loved it!  But….out with the old, and in with the new!  With another “holiday” looming on the horizon, I was eager to pull out the Hallowe’en items that I’d stashed away for our October bin.

So, Saturday night, I handed the bags of goodies over to Andrew (seen above, in his jammies), and he pulled it all together for me.   He started with orange lentils and dried black beans (I picked up both at the Bulk Barn about a month ago).

Everything else, I either had on hand here, or had picked up at the Dollar Store: beaded necklaces, witches fingers, plastic skulls, foam bats, Hallowe’en rings and erasers, a large pipe-cleaner/styrofoam spider, and some awesome battery-operated flicker candles.  I love flicker candles, and was really happy to find some in orange.

Today, just before the Hooligans arrived, I added some scoops, and containers.

Ok.  The Hooligans LOVED IT.  We went to the beach for the morning, but before and after the beach, after lunch, and after naps, there was always someone, or several “someones” digging and playing.   

I’m always amazed at how even the youngest ones grasp the concept of playing OVER the bin, so we don’t end up with half the beans on the ground.  A reminder every now and then helps, but for the most part, they just do the scooping and pouring over the bin.  This morning, I just swept any strays into the garden, as I’d had it set up on the front porch, but this afternoon I put a plastic table-cloth underneath it.   At the end of the day I just picked up the tablecloth and tipped any spilled beans back into the bin.

There’s rain in the forecast for tomorrow, so I think we’ll take our play downstairs to a darkened room, where the “candles” can really do their thing.

I think this is one of my favourite sensory bins yet!  What do you think?