Halloween activities for preschoolers you can print tonight

Halloween is a gift for anyone with a three to six year old. Pumpkins, bats, a ghost or two and a black cat give you a whole month of themed things to do, and most of them need nothing more than paper and crayons. The only rule worth keeping is that nothing should actually be frightening. Friendly ghosts, not haunted houses.

Printable pages that carry the theme

A printer turns the theme into a half hour of calm. These are the kinds of pages that work best at this age, and why.

• Tracing paths. A bat flying to the moon along a dotted line, a spider climbing to its web. Pre-writing practice that nobody notices is practice.
• Mazes. Help the little ghost find the sandy. Start wide and simple for a three year old, tighter for a five year old.
• Color by shape. Every triangle orange, every circle purple. Shape recognition and coloring at once.
• Hidden objects. Find the ten pumpkins in the picture. Concentration and counting, and it takes ages, which is the point.
• Odd one out and matching pairs. Quick wins between the longer pages.

Our Halloween pack is forty of these on one theme, ages three to six, with the pages getting harder as the pack goes on. There is a bonus bedtime story at the end for the evening it is finally finished. Black line art on white, so it prints cheaply, and A4 and US Letter are both in the file.

Their name, but spooky

Name tracing gets a lift from a theme. Make a sheet with the free name tracing generator, then let them decorate the margins with bats and pumpkins once the letters are done. The decorating is the reward; the tracing happens on the way to it.

Three that need no printer

Pumpkin faces with masking tape

Tear strips of tape and stick them onto a real pumpkin to make eyes and a mouth. No carving, no knives, and it comes off again for a second attempt.

Ghost footprints

White paint on a foot, pressed onto black card, two dots for eyes once it dries. One each, dated. You will keep these.

Bat counting on the stairs

Cut ten paper bats and stick one on each step. Count up on the way to bed and down in the morning. By the end of the month they will be counting backwards without thinking about it.

Making it a routine for the month

Halloween pages work best as a daily habit rather than a one-off. One or two pages after lunch, the same slot every day, for the three weeks before the big night. It gives October a shape, and by the end the pack is a record of how much their pencil control moved in a month.

If you want to see how the pages look before buying, there are three free pages from the Halloween pack: a maze, a tracing page and a coloring page.