Halloween Fun Schooling

Since our schedule was so crazy for the month of October, and I am very pregnant we divided our Halloween fun schooling activities into two weeks. This post includes more of what I did with the littles, but there are still a few things for the big kids too. This post shares more of what I did with the big kiddos for our Halloween Funschooling.

No Holiday is complete without an appropriate sensory box. For this year's Halloween sensory box we had dyed purple white beans, plastic bugs, a pail, and pinchers.

It took me many years to figure out how to best incorporate art into our homeschool schedule. A few years ago I found something called directed drawing. With directed drawings I draw with the children guiding them through each step of whatever we are drawing. 

It's so fun to see how everyone interprets the drawing assignment and creates their own personalized picture. Since we've been doing the directed drawings for several years now, it's really awesome to watch the children's drawing abilities improve.

We did a few specific tot school halloween activities. This project was to paint paper plate pumpkins with homemade puffy paint made with shaving cream. 

This particular project made a giant mess and the pumpkin paintings never dried (which meant they went in the trash ~ sigh. I prefer to keep the children's projects at least for the school year.) Despite the mess, the children really enjoyed the activity and were even disappointed when I took the paint away. 

 Next the younger crew made torn paper pumpkin collages. I free-handed a pumpkin on card stock and cut it out for the children to glue torn construction paper on them.

For some reason all of my children really seem to enjoy glueing, lol.

Yes, we love all the holidays around here and I try to collect movies and books that help us celebrate them accordingly. We have this cute collection of Peanuts Holiday movies. We watched the Halloween one as part of our Halloween festivities. 

Last we made Halloween Muddy Buddies. I shared this recipe here for those who are interested, and as an added bonus, it can easily be adapted for any holiday ~ yeah!

I won't lie, homeschooling is tough. Doing extra-curricular projects seldom plays out like I have it in my mind. There's ALWAYS fussing and complaining and usually some cross words. But, Lord willing my children will remember the 'highlight reel'. Nothing worth doing is typically easy to do and I have to remind myself of that fact quite often ~ especially when most of my days are spent in the trenches of child training. 

Our fun schooling weeks are my personal attempt to break up the homeschool monotony, lighten our academic load, and create treasured memories as a family. Even when the 'fun' weeks usually present their own difficulties and aren't as fun as I had hoped ~ I still keep trying. Because maybe just one day, our crazy, wild crew will get it together and it really will be the fun I had envisioned, lol.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer