Halloween Letters

Last year Diego and I made several fun Halloween projects and I am in the process of planning this year's projects. Here are a couple of our Halloween-themed letter projects from last year.

G de Gato

B de Bruja

Candy Activity #2- Candy Art

Our second post Halloween candy project was candy art. We made an "oruga"/caterpillar maded out of hard round candy, a "flor"/flower made out of a Twizzler and bubble gym, a "cara"/face out of Starbursts and Twizzlers, and "aviones"/ airplances made out of Airheads and Twizzlers. These were very fun to make and D only snuck a couple of pieces of candy during out art project. ;)

Candy Activity #1- Sorting Smarties

On Sunday I asked for help with ideas of what to do with all of the Halloween candy that we amassed this year. I have had several great ideas sent to me. This idea came from The Land of Pleasant Living. Danita suggested that we used some of the candy for a sorting activity. You could use Skittles, M &M's, or, in our case, Smarties. The first time we played I put one Smartie of each color in each muffin tin. D then sorted through the Smarties to put them in the correct tin. After he caught on, he was able to do the whole thing by himself. More Post Halloween Candy Activities coming this week.

Post Halloween Candy Challenge

Anyone up for a challenge? What in the world do I do with a ridiculous amount of candy that we gathered from Trick or Treating? I could give it all to my three-year old and 18 month old but I am kind of partial to their teeth. I could eat it all but I have recently lost 45 lbs and I am not keen on regaining it by Thanksgiving. I could throw it all in the trash but I hate to waste anything. So what is my solution? Turn them in to crafts and activities. If you do a fun activity or craft this week with your excess Halloween please leave me a message or email. I am going to post a few this week and then this weekend I will do a post highlighting all of the great ideas that I have found from other blogs during the week.

Happy Halloween

**Last two Day of the Dead post will appear tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!!

Calabaza- Marker Holder

I love to pull items out of the recycle bin and repurpose them. We keep our crayons and markers in old yogurt containers. For Halloween, we painted one of them orange and I drew on the outline of a jack-o-lantern face. D painted the face with a q-tip and black paint. The best part is that after Halloween we can put it back in the recycle bin. :)

Árbol de Halloween (Halloween Tree)

**Don't forget to link up to Toys my kids ACTUALLY play with tomorrow!

This last weekend I was lucky enough to spend some time with my favorite little girl in the world, my niece. As usual, Tia (as she calls me) had some fun activities planned. One afternoon while M was napping, we made Halloween trees. This activity gave the kids a lot of tracing practice. First, the kids traced my hand and forearm to make the tree. Then they traced a cup to make the moon and I traced their hands to make the ghost. After we cut them out and glued them to a piece of black paper, my niece wanted to add more so she made a pumpkin and I made an owl. She was very happy with the results. D's picture is last. He decided to make 2 moons, a scary faced ghost, and run away before I could take his picture. Boys and girls are SOOOO different.

G de Gato (Cat)

D requested to do another letter craft. In keeping with our Halloween theme this month we made a black cat out of the letter G. Look below the picture to find some helpful words in Spanish that go along with this craft.

Black cat- gato negro

Eyes- ojos (don't forget the the "j" makes an "h" sound

Nose- nariz

Mouth- boca

Ears- orejas

Whiskers- bigotes

Open Ended Art- El Monstruo

This is the first time that we joined in the fun at Open Ended Art by Growing By Leaps and Bounds. This week the theme was fall colors- red, orange, brown, and yellow. I pulled out paper of each of these colors and ask D what he would like to do with them. He, of course, wanted to cut, ALOT. He spent a good twenty minutes cutting shapes. My favorite part was hearing him talk about the cuadrados (squares) and how they have cuatro lados (four sides). When he finally finished making a pile of cut paper, I asked him it he would like to glue them on the orange paper and make something. He created the monstruo (monster) that you see below. Overall, it was a very fun experience and we will be doing Open Ended Art again!

B de Bruja (Witch)

D and I have been working on his letters for well over a year now. We used to do one letter-picture a week but I stopped when it was obvious that he knew all of his letters. Lately he has been asking to do a "letra" and I obliged. I always find such cute ideas for letter-pictures on other sites but they usually do not work for us since we are focusing on the Spanish alphabet. This day D requested to do "B" so we made a bruja. I traced the pieces and he cut them out. By far, his favorite part was cutting the gray yarn. (I was excited too because I have had that darn gray yarn forever and had no idea what to do with it.)

I am going to start including Spanish vocabulary that we used during our projects. I hope that you find it useful. :)

yarn- el hilo

scissors- las tijeras

hat- el sombrero

broom- la escoba

black cat- el gato negro (Notice the cat that D drew under the witch.)

Calabazas-Color Mixing

D loves to mix colors and I was inspired by a project that I saw here on Tired, Need Sleep. I pulled some containers of different sizes (2 liter of pop, gallon of milk, and piña colada mix :) out of the recycle bin. I put in a little red paint and a little yellow paint and gave them to the boys to shake. The boys shook the bottles until the paint turned orange and covered the entire bottle. We cut out eyes, nose, and mouth and glued them to the bottles to make the Jack-o-lantern faces. We had so much fun that we are planning to mix more colors to make bottle monsters next.

Calabazas- Pumpkins

I have to admit that I have been waiting for October. Not only is it my birthday month :) but I also LOVE Halloween, pumpkin patches, fall festivals, and everything else that comes along with it. This week the boys and I are doing PUMPKIN activities. We kicked it off today with a trip to our local Botanical Garden for their pumpkin fest. I am not sure who had more fun the kids or me.