Best Halloween STEM & Book Activities for Kids under 7
Halloween is a fun time of year for children and adults. It doesn’t have to be scary either. Well, not too scary. For young children, Halloween should be celebrated. It’s a rare occasion where kids are encouraged to dress up in fun costumes and they get to eat lots of sweets (unless, of course, some adults still don’t know how to play trick-or-treat).
For young children, there are many fun ways to celebrate Halloween without thinking about ghosts, goblins and all the other scary things related to the holiday. One way to get your children excited about Halloween is to explore the creative possibilities through hands-on STEM and book activities for younger children. Here are some fun and educational Halloween sensory and book activities you can explore in the early years.
Halloween STEM Activities
Funny Bones
Read the book Funnybones with your child. It tells the story of three skeletons — an adult, a child and a dog. Young children love this book because there is repetition and it explores Halloween themes in a non-threatening way. Another use of this book is introducing the concept of skeletons as the structure of our own bodies. After reading the book together, look at images of x-rays online and explore what real skeletons look like. Create your own skeleton using cotton buds as the ‘bones’. Find some black or dark-coloured paper for your background. Get a handful of cotton buds (about 20). Cut six of them in half – those are your feet and fingers. Following a pattern like the one below, glue your cotton buds onto the paper. Cut out a skull-shape from white paper, colouring-in the eyes, nose and teeth and your funny bones skeleton is complete!
Pumpkin Sensory Fun!
Large sized pumpkins can often only be found at Halloween time, so this is a great time to grab one and explore the various activities early years children will enjoy. Cut off the top of the pumpkin (keep this for later) and dig out the seeds with your hands or a spoon. Caution: it is a very slimy and gooey activity, but it’s a great sensory experience for children who enjoy getting their hands dirty. If your kids don’t enjoy the gooey sensation, just dig the seeds out and put them into a clear plastic sandwich bag with a zip top. They will still be able to feel the squishy sensation but without getting messy. The part of the pumpkin you removed from the top makes a great stamp for art. Get some orange paint and any paper and use the top as a stamp to create your own pumpkin-shaped artwork. Draw on a jack-o-lantern face to complete the art work. Of course, your real pumpkin will then be ready to turn into a jack-o-lantern!
Free Online Halloween Games & Activities
There are so many great, free online Halloween resources for young children. PBS Kids has a fun and engaging Halloween matching game featuring Arthur, as the main character. Help Arthur match the correct treats with what each trick-or-treater wants. Great to reinforce matching, patterns and fine motor skills in order to drag the correct treat into the right spot.
Try out a Halloween online jigsaw puzzle at Kizi.com where your child can use their fine motor skills to grab and place each puzzle piece into the correct spot. You can choose the number of pieces at the beginning to adapt to your child’s ability. Enjoy!
Halloween number bingo is also another great free online game featured on Kizi.com. This game helps your child practice number recognition while playing against the computer. Alternatively, test your child’s memory with a Halloween based matching memory game at Memozor.com. The objective here is simple: match Halloween-themed pictures as quickly as you can.
Ghost Cup Building
Build a ghost using white plastic or paper cups. Stack them high to create the largest ghost possible. On one cup, draw eyes and a nose. This will be the top cup which will create a tall, white ghost structure. Before beginning the experiment, ask your child to predict how many cups they will be able to stack before it falls over. Discuss the best way to stack the cups so that the structure is not wobbly. Have a go and try the experiment a few times. Was your prediction correct? Once you have had fun trying this out, use some glue to stick the cups together so that you can keep your ghost and use it as a Halloween decoration.
Best Halloween Books for Kids
There are so many great books you can use to explore the theme of Halloween in the early years. These books take a gentle, non-scary approach to the holiday and focus on the fun side of Halloween. There are many age-appropriate activities that can be done after reading the books together. My top picks are:
Room on the Broom
Children love the rhythm and repetition in this popular story by Julia Donaldson. The story of a witch and her animal friends explores the concepts of friendship and cooperation while lightly focusing on Halloween type themes.
Activity: Go on a treasure hunt in your house for the witch’s lost items. If you don’t have the real thing, then make them out of paper or materials. Focus on sequencing and putting them in order of when they were lost in the story.
Pete the Cat: Trick or Pete
These popular children’s books by James Dean focus on Pete the Cat and his neighbourhood friends. In this book, Pete goes trick-or-treating from house to house and discovers what is waiting behind each door. If your child enjoys this story, there is a large series of books to explore featuring Pete.
Activity: Watch the video for the song “Knock, knock, trick-or-treat” and learn the words. Focus on the order of costumes which appear in the song. Using these Halloween Matching Cards featuring the 6 different costumes, focus on sequencing the order of the costumes in the song and then matching with the words with the pictures based on the initial sounds of the words.
The Rollaway Pumpkin
This cute story, written by Junia Wonders, is an adventure story following Marla Little and her pumpkin which is rolling away. Can she catch it before it’s gone forever? This charming story teaches the joy of helping one another and sharing. The text is short and simple, written for early and beginner readers. The use of repetitive language and highlighted keywords throughout the book makes the text appealing to very young children. The format of the story is great for practising sequencing skills.
Activity: Make one of the tasty treats that can be made using pumpkins, such as pumpkin bread or pumpkin pie. Cooking is a great way to practice measurement and following instructions.
Froggy’s Halloween
Jonathan London has created a series of more than twenty “Froggy” books, so if you children enjoy this story, there are more to explore. Froggy tries to find the perfect costume for trick-or-treating but it doesn’t go as planned. This is great for young children as there is not a lot of text and plenty of great pictures.
Activity: Focus on fine motor skills. Discuss different Halloween masks that can be worn as part of a costume. Either print or sketch out the shape of their chosen mask for your child to colour and cut out.
Have fun exploring these educational Halloween STEM and book activities with your early years child!
