Halloween Party Plans

We threw a little shindig last year for the kids (our then daycare kids) and it went over amazing. It really wasn't much. I had decided to go for it with not much time to get anything together and I was just beginning my pregnancy with Katalin. We had some food, a few snacks, music, etc.. I cleared out one of the small barns (let me tell you about shoveling a barn load of horse poo when you're pregnant...) and we filled it with hay and hay-bales, a construction sign for a dance floor, some decorations, and music. Oh, and we had a rotating light thing that my husband and his brother put together in high school which shot little spots of colour everywhere.

  Luckily, I had good help shoveling out the barn.

 

Getting the last of the stuff out there and running an extension cord and finishing hooking everything up the day of was terrible! It was pouring rain like you would not believe, the sky filled with thunder and lightning. We'd only put beads over the doorway (there is no door,) so we had to try to hang a tarp in the middle of this torrential downpour. Everything around the barn and the path to it turned into sludgy ankle-deep mud. We were drenched, tired, and cranky when the rest of the kids finally got home from school and we took them out. 

We lit the jack-o-lanterns and rotating light, we turned the music on, doled out the party bags, and the kids had an absolute blast. It got hot and humid, the thunder crackled outside, the smell of the hay was pungent, and they danced, and danced, and laughed, and we read ghost stories and we ate yummy snacks and drank hot apple cider, and we didn't get to have the hayride we'd planned, but no one cared. And they didn't stop talking about it all year. When we closed our at-home daycare this past September, they were still begging to have another barn party. Who could say no?

The flash in these pictures really ruins the entire atmosphere, I will shoot for some better ones this year!

This year I'd like to have a bit more in the activities department. We will still definitely have the barn dance, but since we will be having the party on the weekend we will also have a bit more time to work with, as it won't be after school. Last year we had PB&J pieces, carrot sticks, ants-on-a-log, some candy we put in their treat bags, and cider. These actually were great finger food, but I would like to add a little bit of theme to the snacks this year.

So far I am thinking I will add spiders crackers and some kind of decorated cupcakes or cookies. The spider crackers are cute and easy, you put peanut butter between two round cracker and stick pretzel sticks in for legs. Then peanut butter a couple chocolate chips on for eyes. Activities I have so far:

• barn dance
• hay ride - weather permitting, we have an old cart that we can pull with the gator we can borrow from my father-in-law
• "pin the tail on the black cat" 
• "fence walk relay" - split into two teams and take turns going across our balance beam, which is the padded rail off an old waterbed.
• painting paper mache pumpkins which I will make ahead of time
• "eyeball obstacle relay" - I will marker a couple ping pong balls to look like eyeballs, then split them into two teams and have them balance the "eyeballs" on a spoon and run an obstacle course
• lots of stuff to decorate treat bags

I'm still trying to get it all figured out, and looking for more ideas. So if you have any, please let me know! We will have perhaps around 16 kids ranging from 2 1/2 to 13.

Make a Turtle!

After posting about our clay fun, I thought it would be nice to do a post on how to make the turtles we made. They really are quite easy and came out cute. To make these simple turtle shapes: (reenacted with playdough, ha!) Roll out two larger balls, (for the shell,) five smaller balls, (for the feet and tail,) and one ball that is in between those two sizes, (for the head.)

 

Take one large ball and smoosh it fairly flat into a circle, perhaps slightly inclined to ovalness. 

Take four of your small balls and pinch one side, making them look a bit like polliwogs.

 Place them around your oval for the feet, skinny end to the inside. Make sure to leave room for the head and tail on the ends. Leave the plump end hanging over the edge. Squish skinny ends down a little bit so they stay in place. Now grab the plump ends and pull them down to your work surface so that they have a nice gentle curve along the tops and flatten out on the bottom. My apologies on the blurriness of the second photo, I didn't realize it was out of focus until I went to upload it. (To my credit, I was trying to make the turtle and take the pictures with one hand while jigging a baby on my knee with the other and doing my best to try to keep most of the playdough Kaia was using out of my carpet at the same time ;) )

The last of the little balls is for making the tail with. Start by rolling it out into a cylinder, then put more pressure on one end while you roll so that it tapers off into a point. Squish it in place with the pointy tail hanging off the end.

 Now take your medium sized ball to make the turtles head. Start out by making the same polliwog kind of shape as you did for the feet, then gently smoosh the top of the head down a little in the front. Squish the skinny end in place on the turtles body. Pinch the front of the head on the sides, just gently, to give the snout a little more form.

Time for the top shell. Take your last ball and squish it just a bit, you don't want it flat. Place it in the center of the turtle. Start working your way around, pulling the edges of the top shell to meet the edge of the bottom shell, first between all of the appendages, then touch it up over them.

 And, tada! You have a turtle!

You can find the tutorial on how to make this awesome yummy smelling homemade playdough here!

Check out the turtles we made and painted, and the recipe for homemade baking clay, here!

Hey, was this tutorial any help to you? I get a surprising number of visitors looking for how to make a turtle out of playdough, and I would really appreciate any feedback on this post. Was it clear, was anything confusing, was it thorough enough? Please let me know in the comments!

Homemade Baking "Clay"

Homemade baking clay is simple to make, creates little mess, and wipes right up. It's an absorbing and satisfying project for all ages, and can be done again and again without ever being the same. Here's the recipe we use for ours that has proven easy to work with and quite sturdy after it is baked. Even wee ones can participate in every step of the process.

Baking Clay

Mix together:
1 C salt
1/2 C water
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Add: 2 C flour

Work together well. 

 Shape! We had a bunch of kids working at once and I found it best to have them each work right on a piece of tinfoil so that their creations could be moved easily to the baking tray without disturbing them. The clay does not stick to the tinfoil when it is baked and lifts right off.

Bake at 250° Fahrenheit for several hours. Check on it periodically to make sure it doesn't burn, especially if you have smaller things.

Have fun painting! I did these three. Kaia wanted food, (leaves,) and water for each of them. She's played with them quite a lot.

Here are the ones Kaia and her friends made. There are two green manta rays made by a 6 year old boy, a tiny turtle made by a 4 year old boy, and the very colourful turtle is Kaia's, who just turned 2. The larger blue and yellow turtle was made by a 5 year old boy, and the green and pink one was done by a 9 year old girl. I added eyes and toenails to a couple of the turtles at the artists' request. I tried to tell them they could make anything at all, and they did play with the clay for a long time before settling on these, but most wanted to make turtles after watching me make them. What'd'ya do?

This craft worked fabulously for doing with a wide range of ages. They had a lot of play time, experimenting and experiencing the clay, before we finished the shapes and baked them. Everyone was excited to paint their creations.

(As a side note, even after baked and completely painted, we discovered that this clay does not hold up to water well. Like, at all. So watch that. We lost one leaf to Kaia washing it, it totally disintegrated. If you need to clean your creations, you can wipe them with a lightly damp cloth and dry them without harm, just don't stick them under the faucet. :) )

Learn how to make your own turtles here!