Slimy Halloween Messy Play Activity

I’ve been enjoying seeing other people’s exciting Halloween messy play activities that they have been doing with their children over the last week or two. There is something about Halloween that brings out people’s creative side! Mandisa from Happy Toddler Playtime has some really wonderful Halloween themed play activities. I love these kinds of open-ended activities for children!

Making Spider Slime!

I decided that we should try out a Halloween messy play activity this year since my son is old enough to join in with some of the fun! We mixed up some green and yellow jelly (jello depending on which side of the pond you come from) but only put in 3/4 of the water required. I poured some into a container and then put it in the refrigerator to set. It didn’t take long because of the change in the water ratio. I sprinkled some glitter on top, put some toy spiders in, and then poured a bit more jelly on top. I repeated the process several times so that the spiders were layered in the jelly slime.

Halloween Messy Play

My son was excited when he saw the spiders in slime! We took it outside, and I let him play with it. He enjoyed squishing and squeezing it, as well as trying to rescue the spiders. As expected, he became interested in finding out how many spiders he had recovered from the jelly. He wanted to match them with numbers so we got some of our ‘number rocks’. He put the spiders in small groups and then found the numeral that matched the number of spiders. The jelly was even more fun to play with after it was mushed up, and we’ve been able to save most of it to play with tomorrow.

You may want to try my Edible Mark Making Activities for further sensory mark making activities. For further counting activities you may want to check out my Activities to Teach Numbers post.