🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 🏆 Pride & Accomplishment — Completing a craft and displaying or giving it away gives children a concrete experience of accomplishment — building the relationship between effort, completion, and pride that motivates future creative risk-taking.
• 🌿 Sensory Exploration — Handling varied craft materials — soft fabric, rough sandpaper, smooth clay, scratchy burlap — builds sensory discrimination and supports the processing skills that some children need additional practice with.
• 🧠 Pre-Writing Skills — Drawing, tracing, and mark-making with a variety of tools develops the grip strength, pencil control, and visual-motor precision that handwriting requires — making craft time genuine writing preparation.
• 🖐️ Fine Motor Skills — Cutting, gluing, folding, and manipulating craft materials directly exercises the small hand muscles and finger precision required for handwriting and other fine-detail tasks.

The entire family can participate in creating either a fun or scary Scarecrow and Company Preschool Halloween Porch Display. Allow each family member to participate at his/her own level. The Scarecrow and Company Preschool Halloween Porch Display can be very entertaining not only for your family, but the entire neighborhood.

Materials You Will Need

One scarecrow*
One old wooden chair
Any or all of the following:
Jack-o-lanterns*
Artificial crows*
Artificial spiders*
Black Tissue Paper Roses*
Luminarias*
Floating Ghost*
Mini Ghosts*
Mini Ghost Mobile
Artificial spider webs
Artificial rats
Artificial bats

*Links to instructions for these crafts can be found at Preschool Halloween Crafts

How You Put it Together

Decide as a family what type of display you want, a spooky one or a friendly one. If you want a spooky one, choose a scarecrow with a mean or scary face and scary props like fanged spiders, ugly Jack-o-lanterns, bats, rats, and black roses. If you want a cheerful, friendly display, choose a scarecrow with a happy face and warm, welcoming props such as the Friendly Black Paper Plate Spider, luminarias, and the Mini Ghost Mobile. The crows are appropriate for either display.

For a Friendly Display

Step 1:
Place the scarecrow on the chair on your porch in an area where he will not be in the way of people coming onto your porch. Position him in a way that your family agrees on.

Step 2:
Add as many crows as you like. You can hang them from the porch roof; wire them to the porch railing or supports; or even put them on the scarecrow himself.

Step 3:
Hang the Friendly Black Paper Plate Spider on the outside of your screen door. You can add the words, Happy Halloween on her back if you like.

Step 4:
Hang a Mini Ghost Mobile with smiling ghosts over the scarecrow’s head

Step 5:
Place two or three happy Jack-o-lanterns near the scarecrow.

Step 6:
Line the walkway to your porch with luminarias.

For a spooky display

Step 1:
Place the scarecrow with a mean look on the chair in a way that it does not get in anyone’s way.

Step 2:
Add crows as in step 2 above, but add many of them.

Step 3:
Hang the Black Pompom Spider so that he hangs from the porch ceiling near the Scarecrow.

Step 4:
Hang bats, the Floating Ghost, and/or more spiders.

Step 5:
Surround the scarecrow with evil-looking Jack-o-lanterns

Step 6:
Add some artificial rats. Have one look as if he is nibbling on the scarecrow.

Step 7:
Spread artificial cobwebs liberally over the porch, the scarecrow, and all the creatures.

You can, of course, vary this anyway that you like. Be sure to involve your family in planning how it will all look. One of the best ways to include your preschooler is to include some of the crafts s/he made in the display.