Halloween Activities for Toddlers and {Learn & Play Link Up}

Halloween is just around the corner and we’re having the “feel” at home by working on some “halloweeny” activities.  Here’s our working trays for the next few weeks:

TOP:  tonging creep creatures,  scooping black beans into pumpkin bags

MIDDLE:  counting halloween objects using a pumpkin counter, letter matching using alphabet cards (all cards are from HALLOWEEN TODDLER PACK)

BOTTOM:  pouring corn kernels, pumpkin face crafts

Practical Life Activities

Practical life activities are those building and improving skills that are of use in the daily life, like pouring, scooping, transferring etc.  The benefits include hand-eye coordination and concentration.  To know more about practical life activities, visit my post here and here.

Everything that involves the corn kernels and the black beans were a hit!  Both Mavi and Vito played with it for long periods of time and I get to do chores while they’re messing around   To save you a lot of work, always use trays, the bigger the better!

Numbers and Alphabet

As I mentioned earlier, I always integrate a little bit of counting and phonics into our daily activities.  Vito is currently more into counting than the alphabets, so this counting cards that I made for him was a hit!  He loves identifying the objects in the cards and counting them using the pumpkin counters. 

An extra fun phonic game I included is discovering letters from the purse and matching them on the cards.  Similar activity with the Alphabet Sensory Bin except that we’re using a purse this time and used both the upper and lowercase letters.  The wooden letters used here were from Hape Uppercase and Lowercase Puzzle.

Welcome to the Learn & Play Link Party!

Here are the featured Halloween activities for this week!

 

 

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything from Just Add Speech

Roll a Jack O' Lantern Game from A Little Pinch Perfect

Halloween Craft Pumpkin Mummies from Handson As We Grow

30 Preschool Halloween Crafts from Homeschool Preschool

Pumpkin Suncatcher and Color Mixing from Age of Montessori

 

Now it’s time for this week’s link party! This is a BRAND new link up for all blog posts that include learn and play activities and hands-on education for kids. We are excited to read your blog posts and to see what you have to share! Please link up below and grab our button to display on your blog.

If you are a blogger, share your family friendly posts here. We are looking for things which include:

• Montessori Education
• Homeschool
• Sensory Play
• Tot and Preschool Trays
• Fine and Gross Motor Activities
• Kids in the Kitchen
• Healthy Recipes for Kids
• Arts and Crafts
• Natural Living
• Free Educational Printables
• Family-Oriented Activities
• Healthy Living

Your post will be featured on each of our blogs where we will pick our favourite posts every other week. That means there is more of a chance that you will be featured!

Everyone, please meet our link party hosts:

Christian Montessori Blog ~ Please visit our CMN FB group ~ Pinterest

Vanessa from Mama’s Happy Hive~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jennifer from Study at Home Mama~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Marie from Child Led Life~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Jae from Pinay Homeschooler~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Heather from Golden Reflections Blog~FB~Pinterest~Instagram~Twitter

Renae from Every Star is Different~FB~Pinterest

GUIDELINES FOR LINKING

• Please link up 1-3 posts
• Follow each of the hosts on social media
• When you link up, please add our button and place it at the bottom of your shared posts or link back with text link.
• By entering a link, you’re giving us permission to feature an image on our blogs. Proper credit & links will ALWAYS be given.
• Please visit a couple of shared posts and leave a comment for them
• Remember that you must link back in order to be featured

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An InLinkz Link-up

Alphabet Sensory Bin

My greatest challenge as of the moment is how to make Vito interested in letters. Of course he loves them, but not in the way that Mavi does.  I know, I shouldn’t compare… reason why I try to give him stimulating and fun activities to get him interested in letters.  It was different during Mavi’s time.  Mavi had my undivided attention while with Vito, I feel that he always get the short end of the stick.  Good thing Mavi is now back in school so  I have time to focus on Vito in the mornings (in the midst of chores!).

Benefits:

• To kids, this is just play and children learn best when they are happy, enjoying and stimulated. 
• Understanding what the letter represents by making a sound
• Hand muscle exercise as a result of grasping and digging through the bowl of rice
• Letter recognition by feeling the letters, ingraining the picture of the letters in their minds
• Early discrimination skills (for matching)
• Sensorial experience influence the development of brain pathways, thus it improves mental capacity to learn

How it works:

Hide the letters (foam, magnetic or wooden letters) in a bowl of rice (or beans) and let your little ones find them.

Dig dig dig! While they can use scoops or other materials, I prefer using their bare hands for the ultimate sensory experience!  As they discover the letter, let them feel it and I would sound it for him to follow.  As an extension, I made him match the letters to the one written on the paper as he loves matching.

He was so fascinated with the rice sticking on his hand!

Oh boy he was hooked! He had so much fun digging through the rice and and discovering the letters! Simple and easy to prepare isn’t it?

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EUROPE in a Nutshell

My son’s favorite continent (according to him)! is finally up in My SHOP! I am so excited and happy to announce that I’ve completed our Europe in a Nutshell learning material and is now cooking in the printer, to be laminated and will be used in a couple of weeks for our Europe study!  Mavi just loves my Nutshell Geography series and can’t wait to try it with Vito in the near future!

Letter L: Leaf Activities in Autumn

We are joining the bandwagon of autumn-themed activities and for Vito, we’re having leaf activities!

Leaf Color Matching

Got these beautiful craft leaves from a local store and used them for sorting colors.  I just dumped them in a container and would take one leaf at a time. I then mention the color and placed it to where it belongs.  Vito loves calling out their names!  I am not sure if he could recognize colors yet, it’s a hit or miss for him.  It’s a challenge to put up a color sorting activity for him so I put an extra effort on making it fun like making noises or funny sounds as I drop the leaf to the sorted group.