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Free Halloween Activities for There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat

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There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat!” is a fun Halloween story. My children found all of the unrealistic things the Old Lady swallowed absolutely hilarious. To continue the fun, I created Halloween activities to go with this story. These Halloween Activities ended up bing a huge hit with my children.

Halloween Activities to go with “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat!”

Activity 1: Feed the Old Lady

Materials:
  • A copy of “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed the Bat!
  • Print a copy of the figures and old lady. CLICK HERE to download a free copy of the figures and the old lady. These drawing are my work and you are free to use them for personal use only. They could also be used in a classroom, but please refer others back to this post to download their own copies. I used Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals to help me draw the owl, bat, and cat.
  • Make the figures (e.g. ghost, owl, etc.) by copying on sturdy paper or cut out of craft foam. I made the ones below by cutting around the paper while holding craft foam. Then I drew in the extra features and glued on eyes cut from white craft foam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Make the old lady. You can color her, or just leave the face plain as I did. Cut out the mouth opening. I taped a second piece of paper to the drawing to form a medium sized cylinder.
  • A plastic container and filler for a small sensory bin. CLICK HERE to see my Pinterest Board about sensory bins with material and filler ideas. I put my figures in a plastic square container and covered them with a layer of lentils that I had on hand. 
  • Index cards with either the figure picture glued on or words written on. If the child is a reader, you can use words. If not, use pictures.
Procedure:

Read the story with the child(ren).

Present the materials. For my 2 year old, I gave her the sensory bin with the figures and had her feed the old lady.

For my 4 year old, I had him pull the items out of the sensory bin and then match them to the cards (which I numbered for the order the Old Lady stalled the figures). Next he fed the Old lady in the order she ate the figures in the book.

My 6 year old is a strong reader, so I had her pull the figures out of the sensory bing and match them to corresponding printed words. These word cards were also numbered so she could feed the Old Lady in the correct order.

Activity 2: Art Project

Materials:
Procedure:
  • First have each child color the figures. They can either cut them out themselves or you can do that step for them.
  • Next, draw and color a large mouth on the art paper. For younger children, you can draw the mouth shape for them. My 6 year old wanted to draw her own. I helped with the larger shape, and then she did the teeth herself.
  • We read the story again, and the children glued the figures in the mouth in the order the Old Lady Swallowed them.

Here are our sample art projects:

This one was done by a 2-year old. I put dots of glue on for her as we read the story.

 

 

 

 

My 4-year old was opposed to coloring his pictures. I did this step for him using the long edge of our DIY Waldorf-Style Block crayons. He did glue the pictures on in order as we read the story.

 

 

This last one was done by my 6-year old. She cut out her own pictures and glued them on completely by herself.

 

Possible Extension Activities:

    • Sequence the story
    • Learn to read the words bat, owl, cat, ghost, goblin, bones, and wizard.
    • Match picture to word cards.
    • Practice matching letters to the word cards using spelling cubes or magnet letters.

 

 

 

Summary of Free Halloween Activities to go with, “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat!”

These Halloween activities provide a fun way to work on sequencing skills, matching skills, and sensory exploration. I hope your children enjoy doing these Halloween activities as much as my children did. CLICK HERE to read about our other favorite Halloween books.

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