Mommy & Me Monday EEK! Spooktacular Halloween fun

I saw this idea last year and just couldn't wait to make this wreath with my daughter. What better way to spend a Monday than by decorating for Halloween.
It is super easy and a whole lot of fun.

To make it you will need:
1 colorful boa
small styrofoam balls
1 styrofoam wreath
round glitter stickers
google eyes
ribbon
a wooden plaque (mine said EEK!)
Hot Glue Gun ***ADULTS ONLY

To make first tie boa to the styrofoam wreath. Have your little one wrap it around until it is completely covered. Then hot glue styrofoam balls onto wreath (not boa). I chose google eyes and stickers so my daughter could participate in sticking them on. I found all of my supplies at Hobby Lobby. She put a colorful glitter sticker on each styrofoam ball and then placed a google eye on top.
When she was all done, I hot glued my little sign onto the side. I looped a ribbon through the top for it to hang from. It looks adorable hanging from a wall mirror in my entryway. It adds the perfect amount of Halloween Spooktacularness! (pretty sure I invented that word)

Amanda and I have gone mad over creating our newest kit for teachers, and we are so excited to reveal it later this week. But here is a little sneak peek just for you!

We had our two favorite little mad scientists join us in the lab and work on some of their basic science skills. Kids are never too young to start practicing the skills of observation. From the time they are old enough to pick their head up they are busy taking in the world around them and trying to figure out how to make sense of it all. Take the time to focus that innate reaction and relate it to the scientific world.
We gave our little scientist a specimen jar full of ooey gooey eyeballs....ewww! They used their scientific tools (tweezers) to extract each one from the jar. At first they just wanted to dump the jar to get them all out. We had to explain to them how scientist have to use tools that help them to be safe and keep their experiments safe and consistent. Once they got the first one out with the tweezers the rest were quick to follow. This activity is so simple yet teaches so much. By introducing scientific vocabulary like specimen and observations you lay the foundation for the scientific skills that will come later as your child goes through school.

After the eyeballs were all removed from the jar they had to use their senses to observe them.

What did they feel like?
What did they look like?
What did they sound and smell like?

Using your senses to make observations is the key to understanding how and why things work around us.

While our little scientist weren't able to write down their findings we did discuss them together. If you have older children you might find our freebie below helpful to use with this activity. It is part of our Mad About Science Kit that will be available this Friday in our Simply Sprout store. Be sure to check back all week as we reveal a little more each day. We promise you don't want to miss this spooktacular classroom kit!

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Halloween fun

Ghost Candles

This morning started off with some spooky pancakes and some Halloween fun! Kaitlyn and I made some Ghost candles out of old spaghetti jars. She squeezed some white paint into them and I added a few tablespoons of water...she shook them both up to coat the jar. I drew the eyes and mouth and she used the sharpie to color it in. Put a small flameless candle in the bottom of the jar for a spooky effect...these looked so cute tonight in the kitchen window.

Halloween Counting Book

We worked on our counting skills today. Kaitlyn used some Halloween stickers to make a counting book. She sorted the shapes first and put them into piles. I drew the numbers on the pages and she added the correct number of shapes to the pages. We are working on recognizing her numbers and using tangible items to count and match to those numbers. When she was done she had a cute book to read tonight.

Candy Corn Counting

Next we practiced a few more numbers by using some candy corn. I made small little flash cards with the numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8 on them using scrapbook paper. I put some muffin wrappers with each card. K had to put the correct number of candy corn into each muffin wrapper. We talked about the numbers counted them and compared them. At the end she decided she wanted to eat the muffin wrapper that had 8 candy corn because it had the most.....I think she got the lesson :)

After Math we practiced her letters by playing a letter matching game, you can purchase it from my Teachers Pay Teachers Site here 

Painting

K had fun breaking out the paint and painting her candy corn...she had a little piece of candy as her inspiration :)

Lunch was fun we made ghost sandwiches using our Halloween cookie cutters! Overall it was a spooktacular day, can't wait to see her go trick or treating tonight!

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