Montessori Halloween Activities

I love the change of seasons and adapting traditional Montessori activities to flow with the seasons. This weekend I spent a few hours pulling out all my fall materials, adding new ones to the mix and strewing them across the school room floor to build new activities. It’s the kind of fun only teachers (and those of us with OCD tendencies) really enjoy.

It’s not without its minor stressors. Kids wanting to do the work as soon as they see it on the floor. Olivia tasting the candy corn for counting. “Mmm, yum!” (Like I didn’t see it coming, but you can hope!) Or setting something in front of the laminator and having to redo a whole sheet of laminating. Fun, fun.

But still–look at all that orange! And pumpkins! And smiling Jack O’Lanterns!

I love it.

Practical Life Activities

Tweezing Pumpkins

Tonging Pom Poms

Weaving a Mat

Pencil Sharpening 

Sorting Halloween Objects 

A few other ideas – Pouring colored rice, pouring dyed water (maybe with some glitter?), spooning pumpkins (I have round mini-pumpkins! Why didn’t I do this?)

Language Activities

Pin Poking – Pumpkins, Candy Corn (curvlinear triangle), and Ghosts

Letter Writing Tray

A few other activities I didn’t get pictures of were:

Halloween Memory Game – I’m is super easy from years go by. I cut 9 cards out of black cardstock for the background, then used Halloween or costume-esque scrapbook paper for the matching cards. Layered the two, then laminated. Voila!

It’d also be fun to take pictures of family members (or classmates) in their Halloween costumes from previous years and use the pictures for the memory cards.

Play Dough – with fall or Halloween cookie cutters, use black, orange, yellow, purple, and/or bright green for playdough. Here’s my go to DIY playdough recipe from The Artful Parent.

Math Activities

Counting Candy Corn – Yes, this is a tempting work. We’ve already lost a few candy corn to the youngest. For now, the candy corn is in a bag and has to be requested for the work.

Sensorial Activities

Matching Pumpkins

Patterning – I took a leap with the pattern cards. It’s one-part brilliant, one-part ‘Make it work.’ I scanned them. Yep. That’s it. I patterned those little erasers on my scanner, put a piece of white cardstock on top, then scanned it as a PDF. It’s not perfection, but it saved time and works! 

I made this patterning work with Joey and Otto in mind. I made pattern strips as a jumping point and to give them ideas to make their own. Today I walked into the school room to see Olivia using it to match the objects to their picture, even holding a pumpkin or cat by a picture to see if it matches. If it doesn’t she says “no” and moves to the next picture in order. I’m so impressed with her concentration and confidence.

Making Jack O’ Lantern Faces – You also could do this as a shape, cutting, and gluing work, where the children cut out their own trace, cut, and glue their own shapes on a pumpkin.

Resources

I’ve picked up a lot of my Halloween materials from the Target Dollar section (erasers, candy corn & Jack O Lantern bowls, pumpkin box & buckets,  erasers, pencils) and Michael’s dollar section (stamps, Halloween paper foam matching pumpkins).