We have been playing a fun Halloween game recently. We used empty milk jugs to make these friendly ghost scoops. It was a multi-step activity…with lots of fine motor work and fun.
I cut the tops off of the milk jugs, keeping the handle on. While I did that, I had Big Sister and Little Guy paint white contact paper with black washable paints. They covered a big square, painting the whole thing black. Little Guy said he was making “tracks” with his paint brush in the paint. We let it dry for a day…
Then, Big Sister cut out shapes from the painted contact paper. I didn’t draw circles for her. I wanted her to work on rotating the paper, using her mind’s eye to picture the shape she wanted for eyes and mouths.
She did pretty well! Her ghost’s eyes are pretty similar in size and shape, and those smiley face mouths are pretty good! She was really working those bilateral coordination skills, to hold and turn the paper, while cutting a shape she saw in her mind.
Figuring out how much space she had on the sheet for all of the shapes she needed for four ghosts was really great visual-spatial organization. This is so important in handwriting. When a writer gets to the edge of a sheet of paper while writing a sentence, she needs to be able to determine how much space is left, and if the word will fit…or decide that she better write the word on the next line of the page.
Neatness in handwriting is very dependent on visual-spatial organization.
Big Sister and Little Guy worked together to stick the shapes onto the milk jugs. They look pretty cute!
Ghost Catch Game
We have been using these ghost catchers for a ton of fun catching games…catching leaves as they fall from trees outside, catching bubbles, scooping up balls in a fun catch game, tossing bean bags into them.
Even the babies have been loving this activity. They put toys into the ghosts and take them back out again, over and over and over….
Have you been playing any fun Halloween themed games?
