Family Fun with a Halloween Countdown

As I've mentioned before, I just love beginning new traditions with my family! One day, as I was browsing through a few of my favorite blogs, I came across a Halloween tradition at KC Edventures.  A few years ago, she put together a DIY Halloween Countdown Calendar for her kids to enjoy during the month of October. I thought her idea was fabulous and a wonderful way to celebrate the everyday while we're waiting for Halloween to arrive.

I made a list of 30 activities, crafts, recipes, books, and play ideas that I would like to share with the family throughout the month of October, but wasn't sure where to go from there.  If I scheduled them for each day on the calendar something may come up and we might have to move them from one day to another.  So, I decided to keep my list somewhere handy, look at it the night before, and choose what fun we would have the next day.  When we finish our celebration each evening, I will mark it on the calendar that I will be placed in a journal at the end of the month. This way we can pull them out again next year and scramble up our ideas for 2013. Here are the 30 ideas that we've rounded up to help our family celebrate Halloween!

1. Make a "Ghostly Pizza".

2. Whip up a batch of Apple Pie Play Dough and apple pancakes.

3. Read "Halloween is Here!"

4. Visit the pumpkin patch.

5. Paint a pumpkin.

6. Have a Gingersnap and Apple Cider Tea Party.

7. Make Deviled Egg Spiders.

8. Create a Halloween sensory tray.

9. Watch a Halloween movie and enjoy holiday snacks.

10. Put together a Boo Bath. 

11. Snack on a bag of Halloween Boo Mix.

12. Read "Black Cat Creeping."

13. Make treat bags to take to the neighbors.

14. Paint Ghost Cards to send out to friends.

15. Enjoy Hot cocoa Halloween style.

16. Have some fun with a autumn sensory bin.

17. Bake Halloween sugar cookies and decorate.

18. Play with Ice Ghosts in the Sink.

19. Make Pumpkin Pie Play Dough.

20. Add a few googly eyes to the play dough.

21. Enjoy pumpkin pancakes for breakfast.

22. Read "Glow in the Dark Spooky House" while wearing glow bracelets.

23. Splash in some Boo Bubbles!

24. Decorate your own fall trees.

25. Play Halloween match up.

26. Do some leaf threading.

27. Make Halloween Quesadillas.

28. Go on a hayride.

29. Take an autumn nature walk.

30. Have a Halloween celebration!

At the end of the month, I plan on doing a recap to share each of the activities that we completed and how we put a spin on a few. You can also see a sneak peek of each mini celebrations on our Facebook page every evening!

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