I’m so excited to be hosting not one, but TWO blog hops! Every Friday, I co-host The Spin Cycle with Gretchen from Second Blooming. I’m totally thrilled that after she wrote about her love for acting she got a guest role in Modern Family! It aired this past Wednesday, so I hope you caught it! Today I’m also a guest…as a co-host of the Ladies Only Blog Share Linky Party with several of my co-authors. We have been working together on our book, The Mother of All Meltdowns, for an exciting few months. I’m so pleased I’ve gotten to know these wonderful ladies! They are all listed down below.

This week, our theme is Halloween. At the preschool where I teach, we have been singing a lot of fun Halloween songs, reading Halloween books, and also making some easy Halloween crafts. We have 18 four year olds for only two hours every morning, so making our projects cute yet simple for little hands is important.

For this candy corn and M&M’s project, we talked a lot about patterns first. The triangles were pre-made; they are cardboard with black fabric glued on top. We then encouraged the kids to lay out their candy pattern on the table first. After they had their pattern ready to go, they glued their pattern onto the triangle. We also talked about how this candy is not for eating. We’re not that mean…we had candy corn and M&M’s for our snack that day!

This cute little pumpkin book is a perfect activity to do after diving into a real pumpkin! We used a glue stick to glue real pumpkin seeds and orange yard “inside” our paper pumpkin.

The kids love to use scissors, and these spiral ghosts are perfect for developing fine motor skills! There is so much to think about when you are only four; how to hold the scissors in one hand and the paper in the other, moving the paper around while using the scissors, and making the scissors open and close. It’s a very complicated task!

These tissue paper pumpkins were so easy to make, and yet turned out really cute! The kids used a paint brush to “paint” white glue on the pumpkin shape (made out of tagboard) and then put tissue paper squares on the glue. They crumbled up green tissue paper for the stems. You could even add a jack-o-lantern face with black paper, if you’re ambitious!

What have you been doing to get ready for Halloween?

Here is your SPIN CYCLE Linky! Gretchen from Second Blooming and I host Spin Cycle every week. We give you a prompt on Monday, and you are invited to write about the prompt and link up any day of the week with your “spin” on the prompt. On Fridays, Gretchen and I share our Spins. We’d love to have you join the Spin Cycle!