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1300 543 725 Is Halloween too scary for little ones?
It’s a question many parents to young children ponder. In our opinion, it all depends on how they are introduced to it. At Kids Club, we consider Halloween as another milestone in the year to be enjoyed by children and their families – yet this requires careful preparation to ensure our younger kids will take to the fun side of Halloween without any fear.
In our article, we look at ways to introduce Halloween to children under 5, and some examples of fun activities with a hint of spooky and a whole lot of seasonal joy delivered in the run-up to our annual Spooktakular Party!
Preparing for Halloween at Day Care
Come September, the scary props of the season begin appearing everywhere. On the streets and in the stores, the emergence of pretend spectres, suspended ghosts and pumpkins galore can all too easily take a younger child by surprise.
As a childcare provider, our first task is to demystify the spooky side of Halloween and make it fun to help reduce the fear factor to our younger ones. You can achieve this through the activities you offer to your daycare children – although when catering for a range of ages from babies to preschoolers like we do at Kids Club, it is essential to treat each age group differently.
Here’s an idea of how our “Kids Clubbers” got involved in our Halloween preparations and Spooktacular Party at one of our centres.
Day Care Halloween Party Ideas
The great thing about a Halloween party is that the theme is already decided for you. For many juniors, teens and adults, the motto ‘The scarier, the better’ rings true – yet for younger children, this isn’t the case.
That doesn’t mean little ones can’t enjoy everything Halloween offers by way of seasonal joy. Using age-appropriate activities and positive language, our Educators involve each of our childcare rooms in the festivities by emphasising fun, helping children get used to the spooky pumpkins and ghosts in a safe, encouraging environment.
Halloween in the Rainforest Room (babies)
Even though they are babies, our youngest Kids Club children can still enjoy this seasonal event, and we involved them fully in our Halloween party preparation activities.
Arts and crafts and sensory activities can be wonderfully messy for little ones – something our Rainforest room children adore! Who better, then, to help create a witch’s potion?!
There are many benefits of hands-on play experiences, including social, functional and fine motor skills development, which the children in the Rainforest room experienced during this group activity.
Young witches and wizards embraced the Halloween spirit when making their very own magical potion together. They took turns adding baking soda to the cauldron and some Halloween-themed ingredients like creepy crawlies, eyeballs, and pumpkins. The children were amazed as the potion began to bubble, revealing a fascinating green colour with sparkling glitter. The kids were delighted and chanted “more! more!” as they answered questions from our Educators, encouraging critical thinking and improving their language skills.
Halloween in the Ocean Room (toddlers)
The Ocean room children took to our Halloween activities like ducks to water!
First came a delightful Halloween Spider Hunt game! During this engaging activity, the children took turns pretending to fly on a broomstick and deliver spiders to their spider webs. The excitement was palpable as they hopped, jumped and soared on their “broomsticks.” They grasped the game rules quickly and took multiple turns, thoroughly enjoying themselves as they caught spiders and placed them in their webs. This engaging activity encouraged their imaginative play while enhancing their gross motor skills and fine motor skills.
Next, our Toddlers had a fantastic time with the Halloween Hidden Symbols Adventure activity. They were presented with sheets of paper featuring hidden symbols like spiders, pumpkins, bats, witches, and spider webs, all drawn using a white crayon. With great enthusiasm, they uncovered each Halloween symbol by painting over the paper with their chosen colours. Their joy was evident as they revealed the hidden images while spreading the paint. This cause-and-effect science activity brought plenty of Halloween fun and helped with developing our toddlers’ fine motor skills, problem-solving abilities, and concentration.
Halloween in the Outback Room (preschoolers)
Skeletons are a great theme frequently seen in Halloween and serve as a costume inspiration, decoration and can be portrayed through stories and songs.
If your preschooler child loves to dance, we invite you and your little one to get ready to have a dance-a-thon to the very funky and upbeat Halloween inspired song: The Skeleton Dance! We can almost guarantee that this song will have your little one up and moving their bones, from head to toe – just as it did our Outback room kids!
This particular song inspired many of our preschoolers to create their very own skeleton. We provided cotton tips, black paper, textas and Halloween inspired stickers for the children to stick onto paper however they wanted, creating a spooky dancing skeleton. This activity gave our children the opportunity to learn about their bones, how they connect and explore the fascination of keeping bones and joints healthy!
There was also great excitement as the children gathered around a table to watch their educator carving a Jack-o’-Lantern! As the knife moved around the pumpkin’s top, they could see it collecting the pulp. Their excitement reached fever pitch when the lid dropped into the centre of the pumpkin! Yet the best part was still to come – using their hands to explore the unusual texture within the pumpkin’s centre! After this sensory experience, we looked at photos of pumpkins and decorations and discussed why we use them, helping develop critical thinking.
Day Care Halloween Learning Outcomes
The children showed enthusiasm and curiosity in our Halloween workshops across all ages, developing their curiosity, cooperation, confidence, creativity and imagination!
All children used their fine motor skills during Halloween activities as well as concentration, critical thinking and problem solving. They built positive social relationships as children and educators in each childcare room worked as a team.
Enjoying Halloween the Kids Club way!
Finally, the special day arrived, and it was time for our annual Halloween Spooktacular!
Educators and children put all our crafts on display for families to see. We hung cobwebs, spiders and ghosts to create a creepy scene. Everyone was asked to wear their best Halloween inspired outfits to our party.
We organised a disco complete with all the best spooky tracks – including The Skeleton Dance, lots of Ghostbusters and Monster Mash dancing! We ate Halloween-themed food and played ghostly games! We drew pictures of pumpkins, made-up monsters and crafted creepy creatures.
It was so much fun, and we thank our supportive families as well as our children for their spooky participation!
If you want to learn more, call Kids Club Early Childhood Learning Centres or book a tour of your closest Kids Club Early Learning Centre today! Click here to view your closest Centre.
If you want to learn more, call Kids Club Early Childhood Learning Centres or book a tour now of your closest Kids Club Early Learning Centre, click here to view your closest Centre.
As the leading provider of early childhood care in Australia we always put your child first. We are committed to 7 National Quality Standards.
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