Monthly play roundup: October

We’re halfway through spring. The past month of October has been busy with a couple of festivities. Here’s a quick roundup of what we’ve been up to this past month…

Moon Festival
The month of October kicked off with the Chinese Moon Festival (also known as the Mooncake Festival or Lantern Festival). I retold the favourite legend The Moon Goddess using my homemade felt story kit. This year’s paper lanterns craft activity were real bona-fide lanterns which had a tea light candle holder inside to facilitate a proper moonlight walk (link to paper bag lanterns tutorial).

Here’s a snapshot of our own two kids taking their lanterns for spin around the neighbourhood. I have many fond childhood memories of lantern walks during the Moon Festival. So it was nice to be able to share this little tradition with the children.

Birdwatching
We’re back to our birdwatching routine around this time of year. We enjoyed taking weekly strolls to the small wetlands area nearby to say hello to the different varieties of ducks, swamphens and coots that congregate there. We usually bring along a small handful of rolled oats as a special treat for them.

Banana & Berry Boats
A fun morning tea snack the children have been really enjoying are these banana and berry boats. A banana sliced in half lengthways, topped with whipped cream (you can also use peanut butter, almond butter or cream cheese). Then the children embellish their banana boats with variety of berries or other chopped fruit.

Zoo Animals Small World Play
Something fun I set up for the children recently this month was this zoo animals small world play, using our collection of small zoo animals, artificial grass, rocks and other bits and pieces. It’s always fun to see what imaginative play the children come up with using these little props.

Happy Halloween
For our Halloween art and craft activity, we made these cute little ghost puppets with paper towel rolls, crepe paper strips and googly eyes.

The puppets went very nicely with a new rhyme we learnt for the occasion…

Five little ghosts went out to play,
They played in a haunted house one day,
The old wicked witch called one for a snack,
So only four little ghosts came flying back...

We also did a ‘ghost painting’ activity using homemade 'ghost paint' – a mixture of shaving foam and white glue. The mixture dries very nicely into a sort of puffy-paint-like texture which the children enjoyed touching and running their fingers all over.

Signing off for the month of October…

Stay tuned for next month’s roundup of activities!

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If you enjoyed this post, you can check out  last month’s roundup of activities and more of my other play and learning ideas.