It's just around that time of year again! Halloween is a fun time to learn new and fun sensory activities that involve ghosts, pumpkins, and spooky sensory bins. These sensory activities promote a great way to help children strengthen fine motor skills, promote creativity, give exposure, encourage playtime, and help complete a goal.
All of these fun activities are a great way to celebrate Halloween this year. I love that these fun Halloween sensory activities can be done with one child or in a group activity.
Here are some fun Halloween sensory activities to complete a goal with your child.
Ghost Sensory Activities
A fun way to get into the spirit of Halloween and enhance fine motor skills are ghost activities! These activities are perfect to try at home, school, or at a clinic. One fun idea that you can use with your child is playing with shaving cream. Playing with shaving cream has many benefits when looking for a fun sensory activity.
Ghost Foam
Ghost foam is a fun way for kids to make and play with. Playing with shaving cream can improve handwriting skills, visual motor skills, and play skills. It is also a great activity to work with children who are tactile. Be careful though shaving cream can be quite messy, I suggest keeping a towel nearby to clean up the mess!
Here is a fun recipe from Growing a Jeweled Rose to make a spooky ghost!
Ice Ghost
This fun spooky ghost activity involves using the sink and bathroom! It is a great way to incorporate everyday activities into something exciting. Turning ghosts into ice can also be a fun way to involve sensory play while being at home. Following the steps in making the spooky ghosts, it can be an easy way to teach your child how to follow steps in their daily routines.
Learning how to follow these steps can help enhance creativity and teach your child how to use their imaginations. Waiting for the spooky ghost to cool down, you and your child can create an imaginative world using fingerpaint that can help improve fine motor skills! After playing with your spooky ice ghost and creating your enchanted imaginative world, your child can learn how to clean up their mess.
Here is another fun recipe from Finding the Golden Gleam to
Pumpkin Sensory Activities
Pumpkins are a big part of Halloween which can lead to many fun activities all season long. It is the perfect theme to use all fall from Halloween to Thanksgiving. You can work on carving pumpkins, playing with pumpkin seeds, using pumpkins as a themed sensory pin, or even finger painting a pumpkin.
All of these fun activities can be worked on at home, school, and occupational therapy sessions. If you try this at home, it will be a fun family activity that will create so many amazing memories and at the same time help strengthen your child’s sensory skills. These pumpkin sensory activities can be an outstanding way to work on strengthening therapeutic skills!
A great way of strengthening therapeutic skills is carving a pumpkin! Carving pumpkins combine using your fine motor, gross motor, and sensory skills. After you carve your pumpkin, taking out the pumpkin seeds is a perfect example of sensory play.
You can even color the seeds of the pumpkin for creativity. Working on carving the pumpkin can help strengthen your child’s hand muscles and fine motor skills. Be careful with using sharp objects around children. This activity can be done in the comfort of your own home!
Here is a recipe to dye pumpkin seeds for sensory play!
Pumpkin Squish Bag
Making your own pumpkin squish bag is the best way to celebrate Halloween this year! It is the perfect activity to strengthen up your child’s hand muscles. After carving your pumpkin, you can use the pumpkin’s insides as the best way to create a mess-free squish bag! Putting the pumpkin’s insides in a zip lock bag can help create the spooky concoction.
Drawing a scary face on the squish bag is an exciting way to celebrate Halloween in this fun activity. The pumpkin squish bag is a wonderful fine motor skills activity.
Your child can learn how to manipulate the pumpkin seeds while they are in the bag. Pushing the pumpkin seeds around can also incorporate using both visual and fine motor skills. This is the perfect sensory activity to get your child involved in celebrating Halloween and perfecting their hand-eye coordination!
Here is a link to a great explanation of how to make your squish bag from Little Bins for Little Hands!
Spooky Sensory Bins
Sensory bins are a beneficial way for children to learn how to play and use their senses! Playing with the toys in the bin can help calm down your child, make your child focus, and initiate interactions.
Some of the sensory bins can be decorated to match the seasons. It is also easy to make sensory bins, they can be made with any type of tray, bin, or box making it super affordable. Putting the seasons with the sensory bins is a great way to create Halloween sensory bins.
This page has great resources to make Halloween themed sensory bins for an effective therapy session.
Witches Brew Sensory Bin
This spooky sensory bin is a great way to incorporate sensory play and Halloween! You can add any type of object or item that you want when it comes to making a spooky sensory bin.
Sensory bins are a great way for a child to explore sensory play and feel many different textures. In the Witches Brew Sensory Bin, adding several spooky-themed objects can be really exciting. Adding different tools to the sensory bin is also a great way to incorporate fine motor skills.
Placing several objects in the bin can help the child identify them and point them out. This is a perfect exercise to work on visual-motor skills. Playing in this sensory bin can be a perfect way to concocted spooky Halloween spells!
Here is the website where I find the perfect recipe to make this spooky sensory bin!
Halloween Cloud Dough
Making Halloween Cloud Dough can be quite messy! Cloud dough is super soft and easy to mold which is perfect for children.
To incorporate the Halloween theme, the cloud dough can be colored into any color, but for Halloween, the perfect colors would be black, white, and orange. I found the perfect recipe on how to make Halloween Cloud Dough here at Simple for Kids - https://www.simplefunforkids.com/how-to-make-cloud-dough.html/.
If you want to read more on Halloween Cloud Dough, Simple for Kids has the perfect article for more information.
Playing with the cloud dough is the perfect opportunity for children to learn more about sensory play. There are so many benefits when playing with cloud dough:
If you want more information on the benefits of cloud dough, here is the website that I found for more information.
After five years in practice, I decided that I needed to upgrade the look of my office to allow for optimal patient care. Upon researching some possibilities, I came across the Fun Factory Sensory Gym. I immediately called the company to purchase my own gym unit. We scheduled an install date and in three short days, my gym and my vision were complete. My patients and their parents walk in and are amazed at the beautiful and fun set up. I truly feel that my patients are getting the most effective and efficient care because I have the best equipment to address their individual needs. With the Fun Factory Gym equipment, I am able to help these children improve by Leaps and Bounds!
The Kaufman Children’s Center was proud to announce an exciting upgrade made here at the KCC. Over a long weekend in late January 2013, we completed a huge remodel to our sensory gym.
