Halloween can be a magical time for toddlers, combining the excitement of costumes, pumpkins, and fun “spooky” themes. Sensory trays are a perfect way to introduce little ones to the Halloween spirit while engaging their senses and promoting hands-on exploration. Here are eight Halloween-themed activity ideas designed to be fun, safe, and stimulating for toddlers.
1. Mess-Free Pumpkins
• What You’ll Need: Small cardboard balls (or scrunched up paper), stickers, tissue paper, glue, googly eyes.
• Activity: Get your tot to cover the scrunched up paper ball in orange tissue paper and glue down - then decorate it with any stickers, tissue paper or googly eyes that you have in your crafts box!
• Sensory Benefits: Enhances fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and gives a tactile exploration of different textures.
2. Spooky Spider Webs
• What You’ll Need: Masking Tape, pretend spiders, toddler-safe tweezers and bowls
• Activity: Scatter spiders and wrap masking tape around your tuff tray in a web pattern- arm your tot with the tweezers and get them to hunt for those spiders. Count how many they find!
• Sensory Benefits: Great for developing pincer grip and strengthening hand muscles while counting and learning about spiders!
3. Witch’s Brew Potion Station
• What You’ll Need: Green-tinted water, herbs, loose leaf tea, spoons, toddler safe scissors, small cups or bowls, and a mini cauldron.
• Activity: Let your tot get stuck in to all the ingredients needed for a “witches brew”!
• Sensory Benefits: This tray focuses on hand-eye coordination. The green water adds a visual element, and the texture of the “ingredients” provides tactile feedback.
4. Pumpkin Patch
• What You’ll Need: Pretend (or real) mud, miniature pumpkins, scoops, sunflower seeds (for the older tots) and pumpkin spice
• Activity: Scatter the mud and hay, push in some of the miniature pumpkins and sprinkle with pumpkin spice. Let your tot explore the patch using scoops and pots.
• Sensory Benefits: This activity introduces an aromatic element with pumpkin spice, which can be a wonderful sensory experience for toddlers. It also helps with fine motor skills and encourages exploration.
5. Mummy Making
• What You’ll Need: Cardboard cut out people shapes, masking tape, stickers, stamps and colouring crafts to decorate
• Activity: Let your tot wrap the masking tape around the cardboard people shapes to create a mummy. Then they can decorate their creation with googly eyes, stickers, or anything you have lying around!
• Sensory Benefits: As well as the fine motor skill in using and wrapping tape, this promotes your tots creativity… and makes a fab Halloween decoration!
6. Sensory Rice Bone Dig
• What You’ll Need: Dyed rice in Halloween colors (orange, purple, black), bones, and small scoops or tweezers.
• Activity: Create a colorful base using dyed rice and scatter bones across the tray. Encourage your toddler to find the bones or just have fun exploring with the scoops and tweezers.
• Sensory Benefits: This tray is visually stimulating and helps develop motor skills, especially if you encourage scooping and counting the different items they find.
7. Monster Dough
• What You’ll Need: Green and Purple Sensory Dough, pipe cleaners and googly eyes.
• Activity: Your tot can create their own monster using the dough for the body, pipe cleaners for limbs and let them get creative with other crafts! See pic above of Sanara’s creation.
• Sensory Benefits: The soft and gritty textures encourage tactile exploration, while using pipe cleaners and popping the eyes on their creation enhances fine motor skills and focus.
8. Pumpkin Inards!
• What You’ll Need: A carved out pumpkin, dyed cooked spaghetti in Halloween colours, scoops.
• Activity: Not as messy as it sounds! Your tot will love feeling the gooey spaghetti and scooping it in and out of the pumpkin.
• Sensory Benefits: Messy play without too much mess… great for fine motor skills and is visually stimulating!
Tips for Setting Up Sensory Trays for Toddlers
• Safety First: Always supervise toddlers, especially when using small items. Choose age-appropriate objects, and be mindful of any choking hazards.
• Introduce Slowly: Sometimes toddlers need a few minutes to warm up to new sensory experiences. Encourage them to try different ways to interact with the items.
• Engage Their Imagination: Encourage them to tell stories, like finding hidden treasure or making a spooky potion.
• Encourage Clean-Up Together: Sensory play can get messy, so involve them in cleaning up as a way to practice organizing and tidying.
Sensory trays offer endless ways to engage toddlers, and Halloween provides a fun backdrop for creating themed activities. These Halloween-inspired trays will not only entertain but also foster exploration, imagination, and learning!
Tag us in your creations, and let us know if you have any other ideas we can add!
Michael 🌲
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