“Are we going Halloween!?” said my 3-year old for the eighth time today.
“Yes, but Halloween is still 13 days away, remember?”
“Yay! Halloween!” *hops from foot to foot excitedly*
She’s so darn cute.
In our family, the first sparks of Halloween excitement begin around midsummer, and by October 1st my kids are bursting with anticipation. My 5-year-old already knows what her costume will be for the next three years in a row. With nearly two weeks left until the BIG DAY, I’ve been putting together Halloween-themed activities to tide them over. That’s why I set up this small world Halloween graveyard for some spooky imaginative play. Check it out.
Here’s a top-down view of the entire bin.
I’ve got a fenced-off graveyard on one side and a haunted house with pumpkin patch on the other, using dirt from my back yard as the base.
The graveyard is mostly composed of Dollar Tree items: the skulls, skeletons, and craft sticks.
For the graves, I cut the shapes from cardboard and colored them with a Sharpie metallic paint marker.
I used a hot glue gun to make the crooked cemetery fence from craft sticks. And as a final touch, I buried a skeleton in the dirt, leaving only one bony foot sticking out from the earth.
On the other side, I made a simple haunted house out of a 16 oz carton. I used a knife to cut some windows and a door, then spray painted it black. Using my hot glue gun again, I glued together some sticks to make a spooky, barren tree.
The ghosts were toilet paper – two squares balled up for the head and another two squares draped over the top, with a small stick underneath so they could stand up (float) in the dirt. The spiders and foam pumpkins were Dollar Tree items.
My three girls spent a solid hour playing with this small world Halloween graveyard before we had to put it away for lunch. And they’ve asked to play with it several times since then.
My 5-year-old especially enjoyed reading the gravestones and creating new burial sites for the skeletons. Here she created Dracula’s burial ground, guarded by four skulls and one spooky tree.
Later, she decided that the spiders were more formidable guards than the skulls.
My 4-year-old felt that the skeleton would be more comfortable with a pillow.
And my 3-year-old enjoyed scooping dirt into the haunted house, using the gravestones as shovels.
The carton I used had a screw-on cap. After placing a ghost inside the house, she would unscrew the cap and pretend-scream as she let all the ghosts escape.
As their play continued, the tree became a broomstick for a flying skeleton, and the gravestones became skateboards (or flying carpets?).
Every time I make one of these small worlds for my children, I love seeing all the creative ways they interact with the items. I never would have thought to use the gravestones as skateboards.