Frugal Halloween Tips–Guest Post

 

 

 

 

Halloween can be a fun holiday for kids- and their parents. But, costumes and candy and decorations can get expensive, and costs add up. With a little planning, having fun for Halloween doesn't have to break the budget. Here are some frugal ideas for enjoying the Halloween fun.

 

Costumes: Costumes are fun, but trying to buy them for one child, much less several children, can be very expensive. There are ways to enjoy dressing up for Halloween without spending much money.

    * Buy costumes at the end of the season. Immediately after Halloween, pick out some costumes from the greatly marked down costumes that are left. Then they can be used to play dress up throughout the year and can be worn for the next Halloween.

    * Use what you have. Dressing up doesn't have to involve buying a costume. There are all kinds of ways to use pieces of clothing around the house to come up with a costume. This site has some great ideas for using things around the house to make costumes.

 

Candy: Don't wait until the weeks before Halloween to buy candy. Use coupons and shop all year long. Stock up on candy after other holidays when it is on sale. Most candy doesn't go bad. Chocolate candy can be kept in the freezer to it fresh. When Halloween rolls around, you can use your stored up candy for parties or to hand out to trick-or-treaters.

 

Decorations: As with costumes, decorations don't have to be purchased. They can be made from things you have around the house. I don't really like scary decorations. We usually just let the kids each carve a pumpkin. But if you do enjoy having some decorations- creepy or just fun-this site has some great ideas for using what you have around the house.

 

 

Leah Courtney is a homeschooling mom of four. In her (very spare) free time, she enjoys blogging, reading, and reviewing books and homeschool materials. You can visit her at As We Walk Along the Road.

Fall/Halloween Activities for ages 2-5

Here are some great Fall/Halloween Activities that we have done in the past, check them out for some great ideas for the months of October/November!

**Great for Tots, PreK and Kindergarten! 

To find more information on these activities see these posts:

Weekly Workboxes:  Leaves
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf
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For more information on these activities see these posts:

Weekly Workboxes:  Spiders and Wrap-Up
Workbox Wednesday:  Halloween
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For information on these activities visit these posts:

Workbox Wednesday:  Halloween
Pumpkin Float or Sink
Pumpkin Spice Playdough
P is for Pumpkin
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For information on these activities visit these posts:

Workbox Wednesday:  Halloween
Weekly Workboxes:  Spiders (Sensory Bin)
Halloween Books and Eats

First grade - week 12

Here is what we did FUN this week for First Grade!

   

A little Halloween Fun, I found this kit on clearance...and to be honest, it wasn't worth the discounted price.  The candy was gross and the whole thing did not work very well...but we still had some fun doing it, so that was priceless.

sorting Insects and Arachnids - This was the first time I didn't really care for the science activity that was with the curriculum, it was just a cut and paste sheet about the differences of spiders and insects.  C isn't really into cutting and pasting, so I thought this activity would be more fun for him.  I bought the plastic bugs at Oriental Trading.

We also did this book from Enchanted Learning - Spider Shape Book

Montessori Print Shop - Nomenclature Spider Book (from the zoology book bundle)

Spider life cycle puzzle from 2TeachingMommies Spider Unit

We watched

(Magic School Bus episode:  Spins a Web)


We read                       C read              
       

C also finished Math-U-See Alpha, so we will be moving on to Beta next week!

Next week we continue with Arthopoda and will be studying Insects for 4 weeks - First stop....Butterflies!
:Posted with Blogsy

Preschool Wrap-Up (week 12)

Painting with spiders

Shaving cream spiders web and toy spiders

Matching spiders to web (one-to-one correspondence)

do-a-dot pages

Sensory bin

Cutting strips

Spider Game

Pom Poms in an apricot tray

Letter S tray

Color sorting

Slap the spider game (Letter recognition) - for the younger one I let him slap any letter and then Z or I would say what letter it is, for Z I would call a letter and he would find it and slap it. 

Halloween beanie babies

He is our original workbox post with links to all the great printables

You can see more of our spider work tomorrow on my First Grade post!

Next Week:  Butterflies

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Weekly Workboxes - Week 12

Most of this weeks printables came from 2 Teaching Mommies Spider Unit (unless otherwise indicated), Thanks for providing such amazing printables for FREE!  I reordered our First Grade Science (Pandia Press Life Science) so that we were on Spiders this week for Halloween!  (and also to work around a few field trips that are planned for next month).  Our weekly preschool boxes corresponds with my First Graders Science lessons.

Our Spider themed books (we also have a bin of Halloween themed books with some Halloween Beanie Babies to play with).

Halloween themed sensory bin (orange rice and dried black beans with lots of Halloween paraphernalia thrown in.  The Education Cube  has different Halloween movements, and Halloween themed color book.  (I printed these both last year, and can't seem to find where I got them from....sorry).

Pom-Pom transfer

Spider Game

Magnet Page

Spiders and Webs - I have tweezers for transfer, and the webs I just did a google image search and printed out a few different ones.

Spider Color Match - I just drew the webs myself to match the colors of the spiders.

Ss Tray

Variety of Art activities - we have cutting strips FREE from Montessori Print Shop, some do-a-dot pages from 3 Dinosaurs, some Halloween stamps, and we will also do some painting with spiders, and making playdough spiders.

Spider Counting Clip Cards

Spider Size Sort

Swat that Spider

These ideas and MORE are pinned on my Preschool pinboard, check it out!

Come back on Saturday to check out our weekly wrap up and Sunday to see what we did in First Grade!!

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Workbox Wednesday

I know Halloween is over, but a lot of these activities can be used throughout the fall season!  (or just book mark it for next year! *wink*). 

Tot School – 30mos

Sifting Spiders from rice/beans (idea from counting coconuts)


Tweezing spiders and putting them into the apricot tray (egg carton would work)


Pouring buttons and other Fall/Halloween trinkets (stuff from my scrapbooking stash)


Halloween stamping

Tweezing spiders to remove them from the little pumpkins

K5

Smelling and matching pumpkin pie spices, the wheel chart is from Montessori Print Shop.  I put them in film canisters, one set has labels, and they are color coded on the bottom for self correcting, the dots on the top are for control purposes).


Nonstandard measurement of a pumpkin, height and circumference

Observation of a Pumpkin from 2TeachingMommies


Pumpkin Patch:  How Many worksheet from Enchanted Learning
Pumpkin addition and graphing sheet from 1+1+1=1 (using education cubes and blank template)


Halloween words – this activity is to stamp the letters, but I changed it to stamp the words, but C didn’t want to stamp, so he just wrote them.  From 2Teaching Mommies

Activities for both

Marble painting spider webs

Painting paper plates black, poking holes and then lacing with white yarn to make spider webs.

I had the hubs drill some holes in these little pumpkins so that the kiddos could use them like potato heads, they had a lot of fun with it!

Linking up with: