Admittedly, some (many? most?) of the activities I dream up for the kids don’t inspire the reaction I envisioned. Maybe they swap out items, maybe they never play with the activity, or maybe I spend more time cleaning up after the activity than they spend playing.
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Our Halloween, however, table has been a hands-down favorite.
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We made haunted houses from shoeboxes, and spray-painted them with chalkboard paint. The kids have had so much fun role-playing with the creatures that they haven’t even chalked their houses!
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I let the kids draw where they wanted doors and windows and I used a utility knife to cut. We also used the leftover lid piece and some hot glue to make a second story floor inside the house. These are really sturdy corrugated boxes, not just paperboard – there is a good chance they will last another year!
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The tub also includes dyed-green pasta (food coloring + rubbing alcohol), mini erasers purchased at the end of last year’s Halloween season, small pumpkin treat containers we saved from a treat last year, spider rings, little finger puppets, and…THE MCDONALD’S CHICKEN NUGGETS!
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Most of the nuggets were purchased at a garage sale a couple years ago, and a few came from eBay. The kids love these and begin asking on September 1, “When can we get out the chicken nuggets?”
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Right now, the chicken nuggets are trick-or-treating and collecting the mini erasers as their candies. There are trades happening, counting, sorting, adding and subtracting, patterns and comparing. The dialogue is amazing; I could sit and listen for hours!
