Making Hanging Ghosts & Learning about Under and Over

Even you have to do a lot of this activity for a toddler, they have so much fun with the materials.



Let them hold the balls - all toddlers seem to love balls. Don't worry if they dig their fingers in a little, as that's only part of the fun for them, they also get to learn about texture.

After playing with the balls, wave around some cheese cloth and make a ghost noise. They will probably think you are so funny. Then tell them that ghosts hide under the cloth and show them that the ball goes under the cloth and that the cloth goes over the ball. Emphasize "under" and "over" for a fun learning opportunity, and then ask them if they'd like to try to put the cloth over the ball. You can see here, that my little toddler was deep in thought about these concepts and also having a ton of fun waving the cloth and ball around and making ghost noises.

Talk about little bit move about over and under and then ask him if he's ready to move on and give the ghosts a tie and eyes and a mouth. He'll be excited for anything new. I used black pipe cleaners for the tie, but you can use any string or ribbon as well. And I used black felt for the eyes and mouth, but again, you can use black paper, fabric, anything you might have.

Your toddler can help place the eyes and mouth, and then you can hang them up and admire them.

My toddler was still engaged at this point, and since we had all of the materials out, I asked him if he's like to make a hat. (He's obsessed with hats, since he and his dad where them all of the time, so he was willing to do another step.) I had to make the hat and explain what I was doing the whole time, while telling him that mommy has to do this point. I enticed him to be patient by saying "here comes the hat" a lot.

I put glue on the hat and let him place it on a ghost's head. And he made another one for one of the other ghosts.

Be as creative as you want. This isn't necessarily just for toddlers. I had a couple roses in my craft box and put them on the hats too to make them even more festive.



And finally, we hung them in the window, and the little guys talked about ghosts for weeks!

Kid Crafts: Halloween Jack-o'-Lantern & Learning about Eyes, Nose, and Mouth Together

Doing crafts with toddlers is probably a lot different than doing crafts with preschools and of course older children, because you have to remember that toddlers have very short attention spans. If you don't remember that, you might fee like you're wasting time doing crafts with them. However, if you keep that in mind, you can be creative in involving them in crafts, plus, at this age, you get to help them a lot with their crafts, which I personally love, because (1), I love to do crafts, and (2), it fun to be a partner with my toddler.

In this activity, I explained to my toddler what we're going to do: "mommy is going to cut out a pumpkin, and you get to put eyes, nose, and a mouth on it to make a Jack-O-Lantern. It's a good idea to read several books about Halloween and pumpkins if you kiddo is young and doesn't really know what Jack-O-Lanterns are yet, but it's not a requirement; you can always just talk about it too.

After I cut out the pumpkin, and he fully inspected it, he watched me cut out the eyes, nose, and mouth. He of course wanted to try the scissors, which I let him try and explained their use and that they were very sharp, but which he wasn't able to use yet, so he lost interest pretty quickly.

What he was very interested in was playing with the eyes, nose, and mouth. He inspected each one; we talked about where they are on our own bodies and where they go on the pumpkin; and I encouraged him to play with them and have fun deciding where he would like them to go.

Toddlers seem to be very tactile, so he played for a while mainly touching and looking at the shapes (like two minutes). We talked about shapes, and then I asked him if he was ready to glue them down, so that they will stick in place, and he was excited. Before doing so, I helped him move them into a more realistic place while again talking about where eyes, nose, and mouth go (remember, at this age, you get to help, so feel free to jump in; they seem to love it), and then I told him about glue...



As you can see above, he was so excited when I asked him to press everything down hard, so that they would stick. Then we talked about what a stem is while I cut one out, and again, amazement. 

Finally, I asked if he'd like to color the pumpkin with markers, and he loves to color, so that was a great final step. 

We hung the pumpkin in the window, and it was a great decoration. Later we added our homemade ghosts, which I share about in another post.