15 Sensory Friendly Halloween Crafts
Photo from azgolfhomes.com.
Halloween is fast-approaching, and with it comes the opportunity for lots of fun activities to celebrate the festivities. It’s a great holiday for getting your little ones’ hands dirty, whether that be in arts and crafts, sensory exploration or even pumpkin guts. The following Halloween activities are sensory friendly, meaning they can help children with special needs learn to self-regulate reactions to their different senses; this sort of activity allows for both encouraging creativity and fun and improving cognitive development and functional skills. Click on the links below to read the full instructions.
Making paper plate spiders is a simple craft that utilizes fine motor skills and creativity. You can use these adorable and spooky creatures to decorate your home, both inside and outside.
These “spider suckers” are like the paper plate spiders above, but extra sweet! Consider preparing them with your child ahead of time and hiding them throughout your home for a Halloween day lollipop hunt.
Also simple, and making use of many items you likely already have, toilet paper roll crafts are a great way to improve your child’s motor skills while encouraging creativity. As pictured, you can make a variety of Halloween-related figures, including (but certainly not limited to!) Frankenstein, Dracula, mummies and pumpkins.
A safe, easy and versatile alternative to jack-o’-lantern carving, pumpkin finger painting is a way for your little ones to get involved in your pumpkin-themed decorations this year. While getting their hands dirty and making a bit of a parent-sanctioned mess, they’ll be experimenting with different touch sensations and enhancing their motor skills.
Easy to make with household ingredients, this monster moon sand pit will surely entertain both you and your child. Moon sand is always a fun way to get the hands moving, and in this variation you can build a monster by adding googly eyes, pompoms, beads and buttons, pipe cleaners and more to the mix. Get creative with these constructions!
Slime monsters are a gooey, green, glittery way to celebrate Halloween while exposing your child to new feelings and getting their hands moving. Making it together can be a fun way to work on measurements and motor skills. Also check out this glitter spider slime variation.
Photo from redtedart.com.
Not only are these stress balls fun to make and decorate during Halloween, but they can also be useful throughout the entire year. Stress balls serve as both good sensory objects and a method for calming oneself down. Consider taking this time to talk to your child about coping with anxiety-provoking situations.
Sensory bins are common tools for exploring the senses. They are flexible, loads of fun and easily customized for any occasion. Play around with all the different objects and textures in the bin, and talk about what it feels like, encouraging your child to do the same if verbal. Find additional ideas for your sensory bin here, or consider an edible sensory bin.
A sort of twist on the typical sensory bin, these mystery touch and feel boxes can add a spooky surprise to your Halloween celebration by substituting household items for scary objects, like eyeballs and “ghost poop.” Many objects are edible, making this a great activity for children who have limited tastes, as it can introduce them to new textures and ease some anxiety around food; it can also be a safe option for children who tend to put objects in their mouths. Find even more ideas for mystery objects here.
Build a spider web rescue in a sensory bin to help your child develop their fine motor skills while working toward a goal: saving the insects before the spider can eat them. The backstory and goal-directed behavior plus the motor skills practice make this a great Halloween activity for children with autism.
This is a fun and easy activity that can get everyone in the family involved. It’s the perfect way to work on motor skills and creativity while experimenting with different textures and learning shapes and colors. To continue the activity, consider putting on a puppet show together!
While these cute keepsakes are a little more involved than some of the other crafts, they are still a relatively simple way to make some spooky decorations for your home, as well as getting your little ones to use their hands in the activity.
Coloring pages are a super easy and accessible activity for any age, and these spooky designs help enhance fine motor skills. This website offers 75 free and printable Halloween-themed pages.
Here is a way to work on math skills, with all the added excitement of Halloween candy. Your children can count, weigh, measure, graph and more with their goodies, making math truly sweet. Print out pre-made worksheets here.
This Halloween will look different from past ones; embrace this by decorating face masks with your child. Your masks can be scary or sweet, and you can continue to wear them after Halloween has passed. This is yet another activity that engages fine motor skills and creativity. The website has instructions for making four designs, but let your imagination run free!
Regardless of whether your child likes art or play, and whether they are working on creative expression, fine motor skills, sensory regulation or something else, there should be a fun, simple and safe activity for everyone here. Happy Halloween!