This post was contributed by Dyan of And Next Comes L.
A Fun (& Easy!) Halloween Activity with Play Dough
We’ve been getting into the Halloween spirit at my house recently. The boys have made felt ghosts, counted ghosts, played with a ghost sensory bin, and built spiderwebs for some colorful spiders. However, we haven’t done anything pumpkin related yet so I set up this jack-o-lantern play dough Halloween activity for the boys.
I whipped up a batch of orange play dough (my go-to recipe is this one from The Imagination Tree). I just recently found liquid watercolors locally (about time!) and tried them out in this batch of play dough. It’s the first time I’ve made play dough without having stained hands for the rest of the day so thank you, liquid watercolors.
A Play Dough Jack-O-Lantern Halloween Activity
I divided the play dough into five balls and set out three bowls of decorations: black pom poms, black glass stones, and pieces of green pipe cleaner.
K really had no interest in this Halloween activity. He pressed a single black glass stone into two separate balls of play dough and that was it. J, on the other hand, had a blast with it. He spent lots of time decorating the pumpkins and eventually progressed to making some “pumpkin birthday cakes” and decorated them up. I’ll just be sharing his jack-o-lantern creations with you today. He started off simple, placing two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a stem onto a play dough pumpkin.
Then he started adding some ears to each of the pumpkins to create these adorable and goofy jack-o-lanterns. J’s play dough jack-o-lanterns turned out cute and, like I mentioned, he had a lot of fun with this Halloween activity.
Married to her high school sweetheart, Dyan is a stay at home mom to two boys, J and K, who also teaches piano part time out of her home. She began her blog “And Next Comes L” in March 2013 after some mom friends encouraged her to share her creative ideas. You can read more about how her blog came to be here. She loves to dabble in all things creative and crafty, but particularly enjoys making homemade toys and quiet books for her kids.
I love that this Halloween activity is so easy to put together for the kids and encourages open ended creativity, too. And my kids always love play dough. Dyan is always full of fun play activities for kids! Thanks, Dyan.
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Anna@The Measured Mom says
SO cute and fun! Thanks so much for linking up with us at After School!
Beth says
What an inviting playful activity! I added this to my popular PUmpkin Round-up Post (http://www.123homeschool4me.com/2013/09/36-pumpkin-crafts-kids-activities.html) & pinned it =)
Thanks for linking up to TGIF! Have a GREAT weekend,
Beth =)
Laughing Kids Learn says
So excited to feature this as part of my ‘Share It Saturday’ collection.
Thank you so kindly for linking up.
Kate
Jill says
Play dough jack-o-lanterns are a really fun tactile learning activity, especially at Halloween! Thank you for sharing and for linking up this week to the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop.
Natalie says
Those pumpkins look very cheerful indeed! Thanks for sharing with Afterschool!
Amberly Steele says
These are really cute! We are always playing with play-doh!