My Name is Katie Thomas. I am a qualified Norland Nanny and I am currently nannying in London. I have a passion for supporting parents, and love looking after my tiny team, providing age-appropriate, fun, learning activities to support their development.
In a world full of ‘Nasty’s’ and ‘Goolies’, here’s an opportunity to take control and take over half-term with a ‘ex-scream-ly’ exciting Halloween themed break, full of Halloween excitement and activities!
Pumpkin Picking and decorating!
A favourite for all is pumpkin picking! A great opportunity for the family to be outside and exploring fields full of pumpkins.
In a world full of plastic, go natural!
As well as the traditional pumpkin carving, continue your exploring on a nature walk to collect leaves and sticks and greens to decorate your pumpkin with a twist! Create your own pumpkin hairstyle using flowers or create some spooky green eyeballs using natural materials. A great afternoon activity with the children!
Another pumpkin related activity is to smash up pumpkin, including the seeds and insides! We covered ours with fake spiders to add an extra creepy effect. You could use large tweezers to pull out the insides of a pumpkin, to also help a child’s gross motor skills.
A messy alternative is to paint and decorate your pumpkin using materials from your arts and crafts cupboard at home. For younger children, or if you don’t have paints at home, just mix natural yoghurt and food colouring for an extra edible experience. We decorated our pumpkins with some coloured tissue paper, googly eyes and paints, to create our own ‘pumpkin head’.
An extra tip is to use an old egg carton, in order to fill each section with a different colour of paint. You can recycle it straight after use- which is one less things to wash up!
Planning a special occasion?
Cup Monsters!
A simple but effective activity, using bits from around the home, is to use plastic cups to make your own little figurines. Here, we used a left-over plastic cup and decorated it using materials from the art cupboard, including pom-poms and eyes. Allow your own little monster the opportunity to create their own mini- monster!
Food gruelling food!
Halloween gruel doesn’t have to be (too!) unhealthy. With halloween renowned for sweets and toffee apples. As an alternative, try Jelly, with lychee’s cut in half, stuffed with grapes (cut up for smalls!) and a little raisin on top, the perfect edible eyeball!
If not, a simple snack is apple slices, stuffed with mini-marshmallows to create marvelous mouths! So simple, yet so effective.
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Halloween Cards
With a distinct lack of human contact and Halloween Parties this year, why not send a loved one a card to show you are still thinking of them this season?
Simply paint your child’s hand with black paint and print in a butterfly formation, excluding the thumbs and using the fingers to create the illusion of eight legs, for a splendid spider card. Glitter and string could also be added to create a web and for an extra sparkly touch.
Potions!
To create your own witches’ potion, we used items from the kitchen cupboards, such as lentils and rice. We used our pans from the children’s mini-kitchen and added some bubbly washing up liquid for some yellow colouring and bubbles. To mix, we used lolly pop sticks in order to the smalls to create a potion of their own.
We used our bath bombs to create all sorts of colours, shapes and patterns. We then washed and reused our mini- kitchen utensils and added some bubbles for an extra layer to our potions.
Top tip: We actually use a cat litter tray for all our activities. The activity is then contained and can go in the dishwasher after use!
Junk Modelling!
Junk modelling is the perfect activity to use up any recycling that you may have! We created our own life-sized Halloween creature and created our own creepy costume for it! We used items from the art cupboard, and I let the smalls go wild! Using sellotape and glue, this is the perfect activity to promote creativity and imagination!
Trick or treat?
Not everyone will be dressing up and trick or treating outside of their homes this year, for obvious Covid related reasons.
So why not create your own ‘Trick or Treat’ indoor version. Allow your child to create their own witch and write your own cryptic clues for around this house. This way your child can still enjoy a “trick or Treat’ experience to remember!
