Monday, October 3, 2011

Halloween Countdown!

It's no secret that Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love decorating my house, I love the candy, I love the spooky stuff, I love the costumes... I love this season!! Life is good in October. We'll spend the whole month getting ready for the big day and count down to it with a special calendar my mom got me several years ago from Pottery Barn. Mine is huge and I love it, but you can also make your own or find another one; Target is selling a kit to make your own paper version for $8 that looked really cool!


Each day has a pocket and I fill them with notes, each with something special to do that day. This comes from a very special tradition I loved when I was a little girl: my mom had a Christmas calendar with pockets for us and most years they were also filled with things to do... many of them written in rhyme! I have written mine in rhymes before, but for now I usually draw pictures on the notes so Molly can "read" them herself. I also do this for Christmas, and I've done it as a countdown for school last year which was really cool and filled it with summer activities. My MOMS Camp this summer took care of all the activities this year though!

Meanwhile, we've already opened a few days on our Halloween Calendar so I'll play catch-up! On October 1st, our activity was to make handprint bats. I pulled out construction paper and finger paints. I had the kids mix up the different colors to create a blackish color (Molly (4) was very fascinated by mixing the paint!). Then we did a print of each hand facing different directions to create the wings. Molly and I painted a circle in the middle for the body and Molly decorated the bat's face. The finished product can actually pass for a bat OR a spider! lol

This was Ben's (1) first experience with finger paint and he really just kept poking at it. Then all of a sudden it was on his chest and forehead. I decided to give him some to squeeze without the mess so I squirted a few colors of finger paint into a well-sealed plastic bag. Yea for good, clean fun!

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