With Halloween just around the corner, it is the perfect time to get into the spooky spirit of the season. These three DIY sensory activities are easy to make, but will also captivate your little ones and provide hours of exploration.
Let’s get into these Halloween-themed sensory activities you can do right at home!
1. Sensory Bags
This activity allows for the exploration of textures, fine motor practice, and language development.
Supplies needed:
- Gallon-sized resealable bag
- Clear hair gel (or water)
- Sharpie
- Googly eyes
- Rubbing alcohol and cotton pad (optional)
I used rubbing alcohol to remove the label and then drew spiders on the bag with a black Sharpie. Add in your hair gel, roughly a cup or two, and a handful of googly eyes. Seal up the top of the bag tightly and secure it with tape to prevent any leaks.
If you want it to stay in one place, secure it to a tabletop with tape, or attach it to the floor to allow even the littest of explorers to play too.
Sensory bags are fantastic for tummy time with infants!
Push the eyes around the bag and feel the gel squish under your fingers.
Turn it into a learning activity by drawing the spiders bigger and smaller, tall or short. Make their bodies into shapes and call out a shape to trace or put googly eyes into. Write a number in the body of the spider and push the number of googly eyes into it to match. Draw the spiders in different colors for color practice. The possibilities are endless!
If you are not a fan of spiders, draw pumpkins instead!
2. Sensory Bins
Sensory bins can be created in so many different ways.
For the one I am sharing here, I used rice, dyed orange, and bowtie pasta, dyed black. I added a small black cauldron and a pair of wooden tongs. Then, I tossed in a handful of Halloween-shaped pasta I had on hand for extra texture.
To dye rice:
- Put two cups of uncooked rice in a resealable gallon bag
- Add in a squirt or two of tempera pain, in the color of your choice
- Mix, shake, and massage paint and rice together until coverage is achieved
- Lay out rice on a baking sheet lined with wax paper to dry
To dye pasta:
- Add one cup of uncooked pasta into a resealable gallon bag
- Put roughly one tsp of rubbing alcohol into the bag with the pasta
- Add 5-10 drops of food coloring in desired color
- Mix, shake, and massage color into the pasta noodles
- Allow to sit about five minutes to absorb color
- Lay out pasta on a baking sheet lined with wax paper to dry
Combine all elements into a container to play!
Your little ones (or even adults!) can dig, dump, pour, grasp, pinch, explore textures, refine fine motor skills, and engage in imaginative play.
We pretended our black cauldron was the bat cave of our bowtie pasta bats and their food was the Halloween-shaped pasta that we needed to feed them using tongs. I absolutely love the creative way sensory bins can be played with!
3. Sensory Bottles
Sensory bottles are a fantastic way to provide mess-free play that combines visual, and sometimes auditory, stimulation. They are also a great way to calm down and relax someone who may be overstimulated.
Supplies needed:
- Clear plastic bottle
- Clear hair gel, corn syrup, or oil
- Water
- Small Halloween trinkets (optional)
- Food coloring or liquid watercolor (optional)
- Glitter or confetti (optional)
Fill bottles up about a quarter of the way with hair gel, fill the rest with water but leave about an inch or so of room so you can shake the bottle. If you’d like, toss in your small trinkets (things like plastic bones or spiders) and any color using food coloring or liquid watercolor, then any glitter.
Seal the bottles using heavy-duty tape or superglue to ensure that the lids cannot be removed and to prevent leakage.
Then shake, tilt, or simply watch the bottle contents as they float up or down. The motion can be mesmerizing, allowing a way to soothe, entertain, and stimulate the senses.
I made three bottles:
- Filled with hair gel, water, plastic spiders, and black glitter.
- Filled with vegetable oil, water, orange liquid watercolor, and white glitter.
- Filled with hair gel, water, green liquid watercolor, purple plastic witch hats, and purple glitter.
These are just three of the many sensory activities that can be done on or around Halloween. They are educational, and entertaining, and allow for exploration of textures, refinement of motor skills, language development, and help to foster imagination and creativity. Just to name a few.
Wishing you all a spooktacular time with your little ones as you enjoy these sensory play adventures in the comfort of your own home! Happy Halloween!