Color Changing Potion Bottle
Fill a small bottle with water almost all the way to the top (leave a little air space at the top.) Add a few drops green food coloring. Then add 1/2 tsp (approx.) of pink or light purple mica powder (craft stores or Amazon.) Seal the top of the bottle well.  Glue or tape it in place to make sure that when the bottle is shaken the liquid stays inside. Shake the bottle and watch the green turn purple. 
This fun activity is dual purpose. Not only is this a fun Halloween activity, but after the holiday, it serves as a way for your child to calm down when they are feeling emotionally dysregulated.

Floating Ghosts
This fun activity explores static electricity.  First cut out some ghost shapes from white tissue paper. Draw or cut shapes to make eyes and a mouth. Now blow up a balloon. Rub the balloon on your head to create the static charge on the balloon. Then move the balloon close to the the ghost shapes. Watch the ghosts move and cling to the balloon. 
Extend this activity by rubbing the balloon on your hair and sticking it to a wall. Use a timer or clock to see how long the balloon sticks to the wall.

Torn Paper Pumpkins
Your preschooler will love tearing strips of orange colored paper and gluing them down to a pumpkin shape to create their own collage pumpkin craft.  Use this FREE Black Line Pumpkin Printable and print the base pumpkin worksheet. Prepare strips of orange craft paper for your child to tear into pieces to glue to the pumpkin shape. (Strips are easier for little hands to tear.) 
Extend this activity by allowing your child to add googly eyes, chenille stems, pom-poms, or other decorative craft items. 

Halloween Themed Sensory Bin
Sensory bins are a great way to provide an open-ended themed activity for your child. I use an under-the-bed rectangular plastic bin with a lid to create a sensory bin that can be easily stored. Place a blanket or plastic table cloth under the bin while your child plays to make clean up easier. 
Color rice with orange food coloring mixed into rubbing alcohol. After the rice dries, put it into the bin with colored cups, scoops, spoons, and other Halloween themed toys.  Allow your child to scoop and play with the rice and scoops. 

Pumpkin Spice Playdough
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice (or 1 tsp each of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1½ cups water
Optional:
A few drops of orange food coloring

Scissor Skills
This activity is Halloween themed with fun pictures of Jack, the main character in the book Scary Halloween Costumes. In the book, Jack tries several costumes in an attempt to pick the perfect, scary, Halloween costume. This cutting practice worksheet is perfect for young children to exercise the small motor muscles that are used for holding a pencil and writing. 
You can find the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and on this website. 

Counting Spiders
Count the spiders in the jars then color in the correct number below. In the book Scary Halloween Costumes, Jack and Millie's house is decorated with a scarecrow, hay bales, pumpkins, and a HUMONGOUS spider web!  This themed worksheet helps your kindergarten students practice counting and number recognition. Connecting fun learning activities with books is one way to make learning fun all day long!
You can find the book Scary Halloween Costumes on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and on this website. 

Pumpkin Counting
Your kindergarten students will have fun coloring and decorating the pumpkins on this worksheet, then counting how many are in each row! This activity helps your students practice counting and writing numbers.  You can enhance this lesson to practice one to one correspondence by adding pumpkin erasers (or other counters) for your students to place on each of the pumpkins as they count. Pair this activity with book Scary Halloween Costumes for even more fun!

Alphabet Matching
Your kindergarten students will match uppercase to the matching lowercase letters when they complete this worksheet. Laminate the paper if you want to make this activity (or any of the others) re-useable for small groups or centers. 
If you want to get some older students involved in the matching fun, use this BLOG post to make this worksheet into an electronic game. The older students create the game and your kindergarten students can play it. 
​(Letters A-Z are included in this packet)

Decorate a Pumpkin
What would any Halloween themed activity packet be without a decorate your own pumpkin page? Use crayons, markers, paints, or pencils to decorate this pumpkin or try something new with cut paper and glue to make a collage pumpkin. Add googly eyes, chenille stems, pom-poms, or other craft materials to make this pumpkin really special. I love doing craft projects like this while I read a good book aloud to students. 
Check out my book Scary Halloween Costumes!

Halloween is a great time for creative food for the family. Have you ever spent hours creating a Halloween meal only to have tons of left-overs because it's looks too weird to eat? These crowd pleasing ideas are spooky fun AND delicious!
​Remember to start off your Halloween family night with a good book! Try my book Scary Halloween Costumes for some spooky, kid-friendly fun for children 3-7 years old.

Snake
This cute little snake is made with store-bought puff pastry, ham (or your favorite lunch meat), cheese, and dijon mustard. 
First roll out your puff pastry sheet, then add a nice layer of dijon mustard. Layer on your meat and cheese  down the center. Next fold over the ends of the puff pastry over your meat and cheese. Roll the entire thing into a snake shape and place it in a curve on your parchment lined sheet pan. Mix food colors of your choice with beaten eggs and paint a design onto your snake. Add olives on toothpicks for eyes and a green pepper (or carrot) for a tongue. Bake according to package directions! 

Mummy Dogs
These hot dogs  are wrapped in store-bought puffed pastry strips and placed on a parchment lined sheet pan. Next brush each dog with egg wash and bake according to package directions. When the puffed pastry is golden brown, remove the mummy dogs from the oven and dot on mustard eyes. For the pupils, you can use a toothpick dipped in a bit of mustard to pick up a few poppyseeds and place them onto the mustard dots. Whether you dip the warm mummy dogs into ketchup, mustard, or eat them plain, everyone is going to devour a few of these tasty treats. So make a lot!

Pumpkin Shaped Veggies with Ranch
At every one of our parties, I noticed one thing-- carrots were the only veggie that was a big hit! So I decided that I would make a veggie tray with only carrots and ranch and shape the whole thing into a pumpkin shape. Use bowls or parchment to make space for your ranch dip. I sliced some olives and placed them as pupils onto my ranch and a small sprig of iceberg as the stem. A celery stalk would work well as the pumpkin stem too.  This veggie tray is festive and is a guaranteed hit with all of your ghouls and goblins.

Spider Web 7 Layer Taco Dip
Make your favorite your favorite 7 Layer dip recipe into this fun spider-web shape and watch it disappear! I brown ground beef with taco seasoning and add a can of drained and rinsed pinto beans. Then I start layering the ingredients on a round deep sided plate. Start with the beef mixture then add shredded cheese and lettuce, diced tomatoes, and chopped green onions. I put guacamole in the center, then drew on the web with sour cream in a piping bag. I cut a black olive to make a spider for the center of the dish. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips.

Bat Wing Pasta Salad
This fun pasta salad is made with my standard, Italian dressing recipe, but I substitute bowtie pasta and add a few fun, spooky mozzarella eyeballs to the top. Just poke a hole into each mozzarella ball with a small paring knife and place a small strip of red pepper, pimento, or sun dried tomato in the hole. I add fresh, whole basil leaves and shaved parmesan to the top to make the colors of this dish pop! You can add cherry tomatoes, chopped green onions, and fresh parsley too. 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
This recipe yeilds a cake-like cookie that bakes up in perfect rounded domes. I just piped in some pumpkin cream cheese frosting (colored with orange food coloring) and served them up as a sandwich style pumpkin shaped dessert! 
This is the recipe (from A Family Feast) for the cookies:
Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
This is the recipe (from Frosting and Fettucini) for the pumpkin cream cheese frosting:
3 Minute Pumpkin Cream Cheese Frosting
​I added just a bit of orange food coloring paste. Be careful here. Liquid food colors can change the texture of this frosting.

Jellyfish or Rainy Day
This cute costume can double as two different ideas. Let your child pick if they are a jellyfish or a rainy day! Just pair some blue clothes with a clear umbrella. Decorate the umbrella with curly ribbons and fairy lights taped to the inside. Re-using the umbrella and clothes after Halloween is over is a great way to make this costume worth trying. 

Scary Halloween Costumes by Veronica Stanley-Hooper is PERFECT for your child 3-7 years old.
This fun story is full of Halloween fun. Jack is trying to figure out the perfect SCARY Halloween costume but just can't figure out what scary means. Bananas are scary when they get old and Mom says the laundry room is a scary place!  This hilarious book is fun, relatable, and sets the right mood for Halloween! Check it out on Amazon , or for a signed copy, you can buy it on my website ! Check back here soon, as I will be posting about fun Halloween themed foods next!

Content Standards are generally the same from state to state with slight differences in wording or achievement examples. You can look up your state's specific standards with a quick internet search "your state+subject area content standards+grade." Common Core Standards were originally designed to level the field across the United States by grade level, so that every school would be teaching the same skills to students of the same grade level. Which ever set of standards you look at, you will see general information which you can use to start designing your school day.

Content Standards
All schools start in the same place when developing a curriculum plan for students-- average developmental stages of learning by age/grade set the educational standards for each classroom. Your homeschool does not have to meet content standards because you can assess your children's academic levels and then teach appropriate lessons to achieve growth. 
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However, I find that knowing the content standards by grade level, can set homeschooling parents minds to rest when they wonder, "Am I doing enough? Are my students learning the same skills as their public school peers?"
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Here's the link to the the Common Core Standards Website to begin your search.

HSLDA
The Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is also a great place to start learning more about homeschooling and designing a program that meets the needs of your children. 
From their website:
"HSLDA is a non-profit advocacy organization that advocates for homeschooling by protecting homeschooling families and equipping them to provide the best educational experience for their children."
This website is a wonderful resource for almost every question you may ask yourself as a homeschooling parent.

What to Teach 
The HSLDA website offers a multi-faceted checklist and survey to help you find your child's academic level and discover where to start your home education journey. 
Here's the link to the What to Teach area of the website.