Spooky Projects for Toddlers You Can Use This Halloween

To do this lesson plan, students will need to be able to manipulate scissors, glue, paint brushes and pipe cleaners. It's also helpful if they are able to tie knots. Teacher prep includes setting up the craft area or the students' tables with glue, yarn, egg cartons, pipe cleaners, tempera paint and construction paper.

As many Halloween activities for this age group do, this toddler daycare lesson plan teaches students about science even as they make Halloween decorations for the bulletin board or the room. To use these decorations for the bulletin board, decorate the board as you normally would, then place these creatures sporadically around it. To use them to decorate the room, simply hang them in random spots along the walls or take some string and hang them from the ceiling!

If you want to give toddlers a bit of history on Halloween, you can give them the following information. Tell students that the holiday was began as a way to celebrate harvest time. Ancient civilizations thoughts that on this day the boundary between the living and the dead was gone. They wanted to placate the dead so as not to destroy their crops. This is why they began dressing in costumes that represented the dead. This is optional to explain to children as some of them may be scared by discussing death.

To do the activity, talk about all the things associated with Halloween and how creepy some of these things are. For instance, many people put pretend spiderwebs around their homes or pretend ghosts in the trees. Students will be making their own creepy items to decorate and play with. To make this a lesson on insects, put a diagram of insects on the board, then explain the parts of the insect. Follow the instructions below to help students make their own creepy crawly being and them ask them to tell you whether they have made an actual inset or just a pretend being.

1. Help students to cut the egg cartons apart so that each egg holder is separate.
2. Use pencils to poke holes in the egg holders. There should be a hole on each opposite end, but only two holes total per egg holder.
3. Ask students to paint and decorate their egg holders.
4. Students can use the pipe cleaners for legs and antennas by inserting them into the egg holders, then bending them inside to lock them in place.
5. Once these egg holders are dry, help students to connect them together by threading the yarn through the open holes and tying knots in the end of the yarn inside the egg holders.
6. Students can play with these by pulling the first one, the rest will follow as they are all tied together. Use these for play or as a Halloween decoration for your class!

Another very simply activity to incorporate into your Halloween projects for toddlers involves using string or yarn, a box of tissues and markers. Simply lay one tissue flat and wad up another. Place the wadded tissue inside the flat one. Gather up the corners of the flat tissue and tie some string around the middle section so that there is the "head" of a ghost and the rest of the tissue is hanging. Students can decorate the face of the ghost with marker. Hang these simple Halloween ghosts all around the classroom!