Happy Friday! And since it is October-- you know what that means! It's Fine Motor Friday!
Last week we shared a simple Paint Chip Pick Up activity.
This week we got a little festive and enjoyed 3 fun and easy pumpkin activities that are perfect leading up to Halloween!
Pumpkin Activities for Preschoolers
*****Pumpkin Activity for Preschoolers #1:
Play Dough Pumpkin Search and Find
I kind of mixed a few recipes together and made our batch like this. I gathered:
- 1 Cup Flour
- 1/2 C Salt
- 1 TBS. Cream of Tartar
- 1 C boiling water
- red and yellow food coloring
- a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger to make the pumpkin pie spice.
I mixed our dry ingredients together in a bowl and then poured in a cup of boiling water. Then I added in the food coloring and I mixed it with a spoon until it was cool enough to touch (which was a minute or two). Once it was cool to touch I kneaded it with my hands to make sure everything was mixed together.
That's all! Super easy!
It is not as soft as homemade playdough normally is, perhaps because of the salt?! But it smells SO yummy!
Once it had cooled enough I created a Playdough Pumpkin complete with a wooden stick stem and pipe cleaner vine. As I molded it into a pumpkin I hid a plastic set of ABC's I had purchased from the Dollar Store.
*Update!* A sweet kinder teacher, Shuna from Pocket Full of Kinders, found this idea and created a packet of freebies to use with this idea! Pop on over to get her awesome Playdough Dig printables for ABC's, math, and phonics work!
My daughter LOVED digging in the playdough, but wasn't fond of her ABC's! HA! Oh well, I guess I should have put something a little more exciting in the pumpkin... like money! Or beads!
The back of the letters are not closed off, so the playdough got stuck when I was pushing them into the pumpkin.
Manipulating the playdough was great for her tiny hands.
She had to pull, squish, squeeze, push, etc. through the playdough to find her surprise!
Halloween Activity for Preschoolers #2
Pumpkin Decorating
*****
Over the weekend we went to the pumpkin farm and bought these cute little pumpkins.
I knew just what to do with them and you can see that fellow Fine Motor Friday Co-host, Georgina @ Craftulate, had a similar idea! Great minds think alike ; )
I pulled out our funky colored Googly Eyes and Glitter Foam Monster Stickers from CraftProjectIdeas.Com and we spent a morning decorating our little pumpkins.
To adhere the googly eyes to the pumpkins, we used glitter glue.
The squeezing of the tube was perfect for little and big hands-- so was searching for the perfect googly eye!
Voila! Our cute googly eyed, glittery pumpkins!
*****
Halloween Activity for Preschoolers #3
Mosaic Pumpkin Craft
What you'll need:
- paper plate
- orange construction paper (cut into strips)
- scissors
- glue
- black construction paper
I pre-cut the orange paper into strips and then gave several to my 6 year old son to cut. I also gave strips to 2 year old Little Sis and showed her how to tear the paper, but she would have NONE of that!
She wanted to use scissors, too!
Cutting and gluing are wonderful for strengthening little hands and my kiddos LOVED it!
We had tons of fun with our pumpkin activities!! Hope you enjoy them with your preschooler, too.
Now, go check out what the other bloggers have in store for you!
- Pouring Practice Activities for Kids @ LalyMom
- Powdered Chalk Spray Painting @ Craftulate
- Threading Straws on Light Table @ And Next Comes L
- Halloween Threading Activity @ Stir the Wonder
