Halloween Countdown Day 21: Pets on Parade

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Halloween 21 Doggie Dress Up (2)

All those traditional pet costume parades are cancelled this Halloween, but you’re sure to delight your kids if you take a day in your Halloween countdown to check out virtual versions.

The kids giggled as we checked out online images of dogs dressed up as Ewoks and delivery men. This gave them the idea to put our kitty in a costume!

I knew our cat wouldn’t tolerate a full costume, but he surprisingly didn’t mind a pair of red devil horns for a moment while noshing on dinner.

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So, as long as your pet is willing, play doggie and kitty dress-up today. As always, make sure your pet is comfortable and happy in a costume, and never force the issue.

Meanwhile, there’s still a chance to tune into one of the biggest and best pet parades when Tompkins Square Park goes virtual.

Spaghetti Spider Web Craft

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Thanks to some recent sensory play with Veronika, I’ve learned a few tricks about how best to make sculpture from spaghetti. I realized the same method could be used to add to our Halloween decor, because it would result in perfect “spider webs”.

To start, mostly this activity was just spaghetti sensory play again. This time, I tinted a big batch of spaghetti a witchy green hue and instead of adding glue, I added corn syrup.

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Just pour it on until you have a nice coating over the noodles. This not only means the noodles won’t clump together as your child plays, but also means the final artwork can still dry like glue, but stay edible.

And good thing, because Veronika was in the mood to nibble on pasta today! I gave her a small dish of plain noodles, but she ate big handfuls of the green stuff right from the pot!

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Eventually I diverted her attention from eating noodles to making the spider web craft. Lay out squares of wax paper and help your toddler arrange noodles in a circle. The thinner the overlap of the noodles, the faster and better these webs will dry.

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Being a toddler, of course she also wanted to make big gloppy piles of noodles, which was half the fun.

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She loved calling them webs, though, as she worked.

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Once we had three neat web shapes, I placed them on a baking sheet and put in the oven at 175 degrees F for 2 hours. This was sort of a guess, but it worked perfectly. The webs came off from the wax paper without tearing or breaking at all.

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Thread yarn through the top of each “web” and hang in spooky corners or windows. Bonus points for plastic spiders to live in each web!

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Halloween Countdown Day 20: Spot Ghosts at Sunset

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Halloween 20 ghosts are sunset (1)

As long as it won’t spook your child too much, here’s a fun way to build the suspense as we approach All Hallow’s Eve: Head outside as the sun is setting and look for ghosts and goblins in the clouds!

The clouds make beautiful shapes against a sunset, so chances are you’ll spot something spooky as soon as you have your imagination caps on.

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Travis was determined to find a witch, too, and very importantly told me it was witches we would see in the sky, not ghosts.

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Tonight we had a thumbnail moon. After he failed to spot a witch, Travis decided we’ll need to try again on the full moon, which just happens to be on Halloween! And aren’t those treetops starting to look like… witch’s brooms?

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This was a fun spooky spin on looking for shapes in the clouds.

Spider Sticky Wall

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Spider Sticky Wall (8)

We had our roll of contact paper out this morning, so I thought it would be fun to make a sticky wall for Veronika. And what better theme for an October sticky wall than spiders of course!

For this activity, tape a large piece of contact paper to the wall, sticky side out.

I cut circles from brightly colored construction paper for the spider bodies and then trimmed pipe cleaners into smaller pieces for legs. I wanted each spider to have multi-colored legs so they were silly, not scary.

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Veronika loved playing with the pipe cleaners while I prepped all our materials! Then we starting hanging up bodies. She immediately latched on to what we were doing, and loved giving each spider its legs.

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Although I briefly mentioned that real spiders have eight legs, we weren’t really concerned about scientific accuracy today. As a two-year-old, she simply began adding legs wherever she wanted. Also, our pipe cleaners kept falling down (they don’t stick well to the contact paper unless you press really hard on them), which made for lots of spiders who were constantly losing limbs.

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But that was half the fun! Veronika thought it was so funny when the legs fell, and she narrated her play to herself as she worked. “Let’s give this guy yellow legs. Pink fell down! He needs a green leg!” and on and on for about 20 minutes.

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Between their bright fuzzy legs and their happy smiles, it’s safe to say we had the cutest spiders in town.

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Pumpkin Craft for Toddlers

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Pumpkin Art for Toddler (9)

This pretty suncatcher craft was a nice alternative to playing with real pumpkins!

To start, I taped a large piece of contact paper on to our craft table, sticky side up, and then set out a tray filled with squares of cut tissue paper. We had squares in red, orange, and yellow.

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Veronika immediately loved pressing the tissue paper onto the sticky surface and seeing that they got left behind when she lifted her hand away.

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I helped a little so that we could completely fill in a roughly circular area.

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Cover with a second sheet of contact paper, sticky side down, then trim into a pumpkin shape.

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For a stem, I simply taped on a rectangle of green construction paper. Hang in a window or doorway and watch the sun play tricks through the colors.

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You’ll get a neat double dose of orange, first from anywhere your toddler has actually attached orange tissue paper, and second from any place that yellow and red overlap!

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Frosted Cauliflower

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Frosted Cauliflower

The kids enjoyed a recent recipe for whole-roasted cauliflower so much that we tried a second version today!

Ingredients:

  • 1 head cauliflower
  • 1/4 cup plain non-dairy yogurt
  • 2 tablespoons yellow mustard
  • 1 teaspoon agave nectar
  • 1/2 cup shredded vegan cheddar
  1. Trim the stem and leaves from the cauliflower and place in an 8×8-inch baking dish.
  2. In a small bowl, whisk together the yogurt, mustard, and agave nectar. Spread over the cauliflower head… just like you’re frosting a cake!
  3. Sprinkle with the cheddar, then cover and bake at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 25 minutes, until tender.

Waffle Rover

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What’s better than a little Mars Rover your kids can steer around the house? One they can eat, of course!

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This cute recipe comes together in mere moments. Toast two waffles and then trim the edges so you have 2 squares instead of 2 circles. Reserve one of the cut pieces and trim into a small rectangle (this will later be the rover’s head).

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Spread one waffle square with any sweet sticky spread. We tried one version with chocolate-hazelnut butter and a second with sunflower seed butter. Place the second waffle square on top. Spread additional sticky spread along two sides of the square and attach banana slices as wheels.

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To build the head of the rover, thread 2 blueberries onto a toothpick, followed by the small waffle rectangle and a final blueberry.

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We found that our rover head stood up better if we used two toothpicks instead of one.

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Chances are your rovers won’t have long to explore before they’re gobbled up!

Pocket Matching

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I had a few old scraps of fabric floating around our craft bin that were begging to be put to good use. So I put together this quick project for Veronika!

To start, cut a pocket shape from at least 3 different fabric swatches. (Note: you could also use gift wrap if you don’t have fabric).

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Arrange them on a piece of poster board and cover with contact paper. Carefully use a craft knife to make a slit at the top of each fabric swatch so that you now have pockets.

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To make “handkerchiefs” for each pocket, I cut two rectangles from each fabric pattern. Place these on squares of poster board as well and cover with contact paper. You’ll notice I needed a little extra tape to secure the fabric on the edges since my contact paper peeled off, which sort of spoiled the effect. Luckily, Veronika didn’t mind!

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Now, I set down the poster board and laid the rectangles next to her. Because it stood out the most, I first asked her to find the polka dot fabric. Could she put it in the polka dot pocket? Yes!

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As soon as she had the idea, she matched up white flowers to white flowers and blue flowers to blue flowers.

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She absolutely adored these little “handkerchiefs” and opened up the pockets to find them and repeat several times.

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When I wasn’t directly guiding her, she mix and matched patterns of course. But she seemed aware of this, too. “They don’t match!” she chirped up at one point, putting the polka dot rectangle into one of the floral-print pockets.

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This activity is great both to engage directly with your toddler and to leave him or her to it solo as a busy activity.

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Pumpkins with Mustaches

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It was time to get silly with some of the pumpkins we brought home from the farm stand!

You can start with pale or white pumpkins for this project, saving yourself the step of painting. But since painting is half the fun, we used orange pumpkins and first pulled out the white paint.

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Veronika loved slathering it all over two pumpkins. I recommend at least two coats of paint if you don’t want any orange peeking through, and would have done a third coat had there been time.

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Once the paint dried, we glued on mustache templates that I found online. Travis got to pick which shapes we’d use! You could also draw them with marker, but the 3-D effect is so fun.

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Silly and unexpected pumpkins like these are sure to delight those who see them on your doorstep.

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Halloween Countdown Day 19: No Mess Pumpkin Art

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No-Mess Pumpkin Art (8)

Here’s a quick seasonal spin for a toddler to paint in a zip-top bag. This time, instead of plain paper inside the bag, I inserted a template of a pumpkin.

You can squirt in orange paint, but where’s the fun in that? Add a little blob of red and a little blob of yellow and it will become a lesson on color mixing, too! Now simply seal tightly and hand across.

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Veronika was so surprised when she touched the red paint and realized her hand wasn’t messy.

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Same thing with the yellow!

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Now she was doubly intrigued. She either used the flat of her palm for squishing the paint, or sometimes scratched at it, too.

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As soon as our red and yellow started to mix, I pointed out that she was making orange. In retrospect, I should have added more yellow, as the red was definitely dominant. But we achieved a neat tri-color effect on the pumpkin.

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Note: Your piece of paper will be so saturated with paint that likely it will tear if you try and remove it from the bag. So this project isn’t a keeper, but it is fun in the moment!

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