Oh, I am so happy you asked because I would love to tell you! If you are looking for Halloween sensory bins, not so spooky crafts, and hands on Halloween centers then I have a ton of fun ideas to share with you!
Pin It! Don't forget to save this this blog for later! You don't want to forget about all these fun preschool center ideas when Halloween rolls around!
Please note that this post contains affiliate links, and if you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.
Spooky Not Scary
Personally, I am a big scaredy cat myself. I don't like scary movies, not a fan of the "gross" parts of Halloween, and definitely don't want my classroom to be a haunted house (if you love those things I am kind of jealous!) . But that doesn't mean I don't love Halloween. It's actually one of my favorite Holidays!
Whether you like the scary side or the cute side of Halloween, I think we can all agree that a preschool Halloween should be all cute, friendly, with side of spooky!
Start With Story Time
Finding good Halloween books to add to our read aloud time was probably my most challenging part of my prep week. I try to check out all my preschool books from my local library and this made my options a bit limited. Half of the stories I picked up had pretty scary imagery for a 3 year old and others I just did not feel was appropriate. But after a little bit of hunting, I found the perfect books to read during Halloween!
These are my 5 favorite Halloween story time books:
- The Ladybug Girl and the Dress- Up Dilemma
- Five Little Pumpkins
- How to Catch a Witch
- The Little Ghost Who Lost Her BOO!
- The Wheels on the Bus at Halloween
I've rounded up all my favorite Preschool Halloween book recommendations HERE
Halloween Sensory Bins
Halloween is the perfect time to set up sensory bin with your preschool learners! You can create all these sensory bins using items found at the Dollar Store. To set up all the Halloween sensory activities, I used my favorite sensory table:
Bubbling Brew Sensory Bin
It's not Halloween until you set up a witches brew sensory bin! On one side of my sensory table I added rainbow pom poms. I covered the other side to create a table top to add the bubbling brew counting mat and my big witches cauldron.
Then the kids got to pick 3 bubbling color cards. Some of them have numbers so that we can work on counting skills, while others are simply colors to work on color sorting with my younger students.
Once all the bubbles are added to our bubbling crew mat, they get to add the pom poms to the cauldron and mix up their magic potions!
Trick Or Treat Alphabet Sensory Bin
This Halloween center doesn't have to be a sensory bin, but I thought it would be more fun if it was! I added orange and black crinkle paper as my sensory bin filler and mixed in candy alphabet cards and plastic letters I had on hand.
Students got to pick a Trick or Treat card that had a letter on it. They absolutely loved picking the Trick or Treat cards because each one has a different costume and the kids loved to look through them all.
Now it's time to hunt for the correct letter and add it to the Trick or Treat mat! I also think this activity would be great as a scavenger hunt!
** Looking for the printables? You can find everything here: Halloween Preschool Activities Pack
Spider Count Sensory Bin
I hate spiders in real life, but this sensory might just change my mind (but probably not!). To one side of the sensory bin I pulled apart fake webs, you can find these at the Dollar Store) and layer it until it was thick enough to hold toy spiders. I added them and tangled the spiders in the web to make it extra challenging for my little learners!
Let me tell you this was by far one of their favorite activities and I loved how focused they were while trying to get each spider out of the web. If you need an activity to keep them busy while you drink your morning coffee, this one is it because they were determined to rescue each and every spider!
But this sensory bin is more than just pulling spiders from a web, because we counting each one and then used play dough to graph the number of spiders we were focusing on!
** Want these Halloween Centers? You can find everything here: Halloween Preschool Activities Pack
Halloween Preschool Crafts
When it comes to Halloween crafts I have 3 requirements: Easy to prep, child focused and of course they need to look cute hanging up on my bulletin board! These are a few of my favorite Halloween crafts for your kids to do this year!
Paper Tear Crafts
I love to keep easy, no prep crafts on hand especially during the Holidays! Kids can choose to decorate a witches hat, ghost, bat, candy corn, or a pumpkin by tearing up construction paper and gluing it to the Halloween craft page! Simple, easy and works on those fine motor skills!
Cut and Paste Spooky Crafts
For my little learners who are ready to use scissors, I wanted to have a craft on hand that helped them practice those skills. Similar to the paper tear craft, kids get to decorate each Halloween craft page, but this time there is a little bit more direction.
For the haunted house students get to cut and paste ghost. Or use the spider web to glue spiders to the craft sheet. And after you read Five Little Pumpkins, you can let students glue pumpkins to the gate!
** Want these Halloween Crafts? You can find everything here: Halloween Preschool Activities Pack
I can build a... Halloween Crafts
We have to make a couple Jack O Lanterns during Halloween! And what better way to do that then to build one using shapes! Students get to cut and paste circles, squares, and triangles to great a wacky Jack O Lantern. And once they are done, we work on those math skill by counting how many of each shape we used!
Throughout the week we do variations of this craft by building a haunted house, a ghost, and a monster!
** Want these Halloween Printables? You can find everything here: Halloween Preschool Activities Pack
Halloween PreK Centers:
What makes centers different than crafts and sensory bins? These are usually focused on one learning objective and I spend more one on one time with each student at a center. Here are 3 Halloween centers you'll want to set up with your little learners!
Halloween Costumes:
Ok, I am not going to lie to you. This preK center does take a bit of prep work, but I promise you, it's worth it! This center allows students to play dress up without actually have to change!
You will want to start by printing, laminating and cutting out all of the Halloween costume clothing items. I know it's a lot but stick with me here! Once that is done, you will want to add velcro dots to the back of each clothing item and the Halloween dress up mat.
I separated the Halloween costume items by shirts, pants, shoes etc using a sorting tray.
Ok now the fun part! The kids get to pick a Halloween costume and dress up the friend but matching the correct clothing items! My kids loved creating different costumes and trying to find all the right pieces to make the perfect outfit!
Spooky Creations - Halloween Dough Mats:
We love using play dough in the classroom, but for this one I ended up switching our play dough with slime for some extra Halloween fun! I printed and laminated my spooky creation mats (Frankenstein, witch, witch's brew, spider web, jack o lantern and haunted house) and set up a dough tray (or should I say slime tray) with googley eyes, pipe cleaners, pumpkins, toy spiders and Halloween themed manipulatives.
Now they kids get full control. These mats are meant to allow open ended, creative play. If they want Frankenstein to have spider eyes thats great! If they want pumpkins on the spider webs even better! They get to create whatever they want using these Halloween mats!
Build It! Candy Corn:
Did I sneak in a candy corn activity without actually using any candy corn? Yes, I did! I thought it would be fun for us to use the patterns of a candy corn and build our own!
I brought out my counting cube and only used the colors orange, yellow and white. Then gave each student a pattern card and they got to build a candy corn tower using their counting cubes!
** Want to set up these centers? You can find everything here: Halloween Preschool Activities Pack
Halloween Fine Motor Activities:
I know that most of the activities we have already talked about included some type of fine motor development, but these adorable Halloween activities deserved their own spot in the blog! We have been working on both our scissor skills and hand writing skills, so if you are doing the same in your classroom, you will want to save these Halloween fine motor centers for later!
Frankenstein Haircut
Looking at these cards, Frankenstein is in desperate need of a haircut and my students were happy to do the job! The adorable cutting cards come in BW and color options so that your students can cut as much of Frankenstein's hair as they want!
For my younger students we worked on pre- handwriting skills by tracing the lines!
Jack O Lantern Shape Tracing
We had to sneak in one more Jack O Lantern activity! I am a sucker for all things pumpkins and Halloween is perfect for that! For this activity students are working on tracing shapes on the Jack O Lantern. I gave my students a choice of whether they wanted to use markers and turn this into a craft or if they want to trace with a dry erase marker.
I love using these as crafts pages so that the students can take them home and show their Jack O Lantern shape faces to their parents, but I also love laminating them to keep on hand when we need an extra center.
Now It's Your Turn!
Are you excited to start setting up your own Halloween themed preschool centers? Don't worry, all the Halloween printables that you see are all in one place! You can find all the crafts, activities, and centers in this Halloween Preschool Activities Pack:
2 comments
Response to Suzanne: The green trays were purchased at Target a few years ago, but I use similar ones from TIVI Trays! As for the slime activity we use this as a table top center to be re-used all month! I keep all the sorting items in the tray and bring it out whenever I need an easy activity! I also laminated the mats so that they could be re-used! But you could easily turn it into a craft activity if you wanted to!
where did you get the cute green trays? Also, when they did the slime activity, do they get to take the creation home or do they put the stuff back after they make it?
Leave a comment