Just in time for Halloween, we’ve teamed up to create 3 fun Halloween activities for kids that will challenge fine and gross motor skills while keeping little ones occupied for hours!
Fine Motor Challenge
What you’ll need
-chairs
-yarn
-fake spiders or other Halloween trinkets
What to do
Position two chairs a few feet apart with backs facing each other. Tie the end of a ball of yarn to one of the rungs of the chair and start weaving and wrapping the rest of the yarn back and forth between the chairs at all different levels to create your web.
Put out a container of plastic spiders (the ones on rings work great for this), skeletons, and other little Halloween trinkets and toys and challenge your kids to see how many of the objects they can get to hang (and stay) on the web.
How to change it up
-Once they got bored with hanging the Halloween toys in our web, my boys started digging through the toy boxes to find their action figures and superheroes.
The web became Spider Man’s trap! They kept right on playing, hanging bad guys in the web and acting out some dramatic, daring rescues! See what other objects they can get stuck in the web!
Skill Areas Addressed
Midline crossing, bilateral coordination, fine and gross motor skills, grasp, visual motor integration
Team Challenge
What you’ll need
Yarn and a group of kids
What to do
Try a more interactive version of the spider web activity above (this is an old favorite of ours!). Position a group of kids so they’re standing in a circle.
Have one child hold onto the end of the yarn and keep hold of it as he tosses the ball to one of the other kids in the circle.
Show the child who catches the ball how to wrap the yarn around his back before throwing it to another friend.
Repeat this process several times (make sure everyone gets a couple of turns to catch and throw) until everyone is “stuck” in the web.
Then, challenge the kids to figure out how to toss the yarn in the reverse sequence to undo the web and set everyone free!
How to change it up
-Rather than throwing the yarn in the reverse sequence to free themselves, you could challenge the kids to move their bodies and the yarn that’s wrapped around them to get free of the web.
Skill Areas Addressed
Motor control, balance, social skills, cognitive skills, visual perceptual skills, gross motor skills, coordination, proprioception, visual motor integration
Gross Motor Challenge
What you’ll need
-white crepe paper
-objects to take through the web as “fly food”
What to do
Wrap the crepe paper around trees or chairs or people…whatever you have handy that will create a “web”. Be sure to string some high and some low, close together and further apart, some loose and some tight.
Now, ask the child to start at one side and move through that web without touching or breaking the strands .
Can they adjust their bodies to the variations in the web? Can they grade their movements to stop their bodies in time before they meet the next challenge? It’s harder than it looks!
How to change it up
-Make it a race against you or another child, or the clock! How fast can they move?
-Give them objects to take from one side of the web to the other. We pretended to be flies and used rocks as our fly food. Challenge the flies to get their food to back their house on the other side without getting stuck in the spider’s web!
-Play follow the leader. Try getting through the web in different ways. Jump over lower parts, crawl under one that is just high enough, try moving through the whole web with your hands on your head or, even more challenging, with your eyes closed!
Skill Areas Addressed
motor control, gross motor skills, balance, coordination, proprioception, visual perceptual skills, visual motor integration
[…] There are 3 different Spooky Spider games described on The Inspired Treehouse. Check out the details of each game, because they promote […]