Halloween and Fall Busy Bag Ideas

I decided to update a few items in my Busy Bag collection and wanted to add some seasonal activities for my kids! Now I have my bags separated in sets of five to be rotated out every couple weeks so there's always something new for them to play with. Here's what I've come up with so far for their Halloween and Fall Busy Bags!

Lately I've seen some really cute number games on Pinterest with a gingerbread man or a Santa theme. I decided to make a version for a Halloween/Fall Busy Bag! I used paper plates and drew a pumpkin on one and an apple on the other just to make it easy and sturdy. Then I filled the apple with smaller numbers, from 1 through 6: the numbers on one die. I filled the pumpkin with numbers you can get from rolling two dice: 2 through 12.

The object of the game is to cover all the numbers by rolling the dice and placing an object on the number as it is rolled. Use one die for the apple, and two for the pumpkin. You can cover the numbers with anything you want. I put a sandwich bag of craft pom poms in mine, but later thought some cut out shapes of pumpkin and apples SEEDS would be cute!  You can play by yourself for quiet time or as a game with two or more. Molly (5) and I played by taking turns. I love that she gets practice reading the numbers while we're having fun!

Another Halloween idea I came up with for our Busy Bag collection is a set of Felt Jack-O-Lanterns! I simply cut out a pumpkin shape and several face shapes (triangles, almonds, crescents, etc) that my kids can stick on and make different expressions with.  My personal favorite is the pirate eye patch! hehe I also cut out a few different shapes for stems and leaves. This is a great activity for my son, Ben (2), because he has been talking about emotions lately! "Ben is happy!" .. and at bedtime "Ben is sad."  Now we can practice making a happy face, mad face, scared face, and more.

Finally, I put together a counting activity with Halloween "candy!" I cut out several pieces of candy from colorful card stock in six different colors. As usual, I used my Cricut electronic cutting machine. You could totally use real pieces of candy though, like individually wrapped hard candies or candy corn for this project! I made several cards to go along with this project, including ones with a number on them to count out the shapes and many different pattern cards. I also included a few simple math equations (1+2=3) and a couple charts for counting out the totals. I allowed for charting by color and shape and also a separate sheet for charting both (not pictured... it's on the back of one of those bottom cards).