Embrace the spooky season with messy sensory play, the perfect way for children under 3 to explore and learn through touch, sight, and sound. Enjoy these spooktacular sensory play ideas that will delight your kids and foster their development.
🎃 Pumpkin Patch
Get a pumpkin and let your little explorer dig into the pumpkin guts. The sensation will amaze them as they discover seeds and pulp. The messy tray pictured also features other gooey and sticky items such as baked beans and tinned orange slices. This is mixed with the crunchy texture of corn flakes cereal and sponges and tulle. Finally, some plastic bugs are added to complete to spooky look!
👻 Glowing Ghost
A super easy design using uncooked rice! This tray shows the rice in a ghost pattern but if you're artistic enough you can shape your rice however you want!
Add food colouring to the rice to create different colours. White fangs with a red blood drip? Black rice to create a cat or bat? The possibilities are endless!
This tray was finished off with some glow sticks around the design. These are great for tracking with your little one as well as getting them to spot them in the dark!
🪳 Creepy Crawlies
Take plastic bug/insect toys and mix and hide them into different 'wet' textures for your little one to dig around and find.
This tray uses tinned mushy peas for that slime green colour with plastic straws. The straws can be used to dig for bugs and also be used for mark making on the tray.
💀 Bone Graveyard
Set up an easy bone graveyard with 'mud' and 'bones'! The messy tray pictured uses coco puffs as the 'mud' with plastic bone toys. You can spook this tray up further with different and bigger bones which are easily found in Halloween aisles of your local shops. Depending how messy you want your 'mud' to be you could use chocolate pudding/icing or even get in the garden and use real mud with buried bone props!
🕸️ Dusty Cobwebs
This cobweb inspired sensory tray has lots of different textures to explore.
This tray has porridge oats for that dry and dusty feel along with crinkly tin foil for the added sound element. The 'cobweb' texture is created with wool, cooked spaghetti and tulle fabric. Encourage your little one to feel the different textures by holding and running it through their fingers.
🧟 Zombie Brains
Another messy tray using cooked spaghetti. This tray is good to get all those sticky, slimy and gooey elements out for your little one to explore.
This tray has tinned, chopped tomatoes for the 'brains' along with uncooked spaghetti and plastic straws. Other 'wet' textures you could use could be baked beans or tinned spaghetti hoops.
✨ Sensory Witches Brew Bottles
Get crafty with some clear plastic bottles!
Fill the bottle with water, cooking oil, food colouring, glitter, and small plastic spiders or bats. Secure the cap tightly and let your little one shake, twist, and turn the bottle to create their very own 'witches' brew'!
Halloween messy sensory play is a fantastic way to ignite your child's imagination and curiosity during this season of magic and wonder. These activities not only offer sensory stimulation but also encourage creativity, fine motor development, and a deep appreciation for the changing world around them. It good to do a mix of dry and 'wet' messy and sensory options to really let your little one explore texture.
Don't be afraid to get a little messy yourself – it's all part of the fun!