Eric VanRaepenbusch's Blog, page 10

FREE Printable Halloween Cards

Enjoy these Three Ghost Friends Halloween cards!

Directions: Download, print, fold in half, and then fold in half again. Have your child give them to their friends and classmates this Halloween!
Chocolate Ghost - Download Now!
Huge Jack o'Lantern - Download Now!
Boo! Boo! Boo! - Download Now!
Kanga-BOO! - Download Now!
In a Dark, Dark Box - Download Now! 

Guess What Costume!

In my book, Three Ghost Friends: Learn About the ABCs - Halloween Edition , the Three Ghost Friends hope to find just the right costumes to wear for Trick or Treat.  It proves to be difficult with at least one ghost friend not wanting to follow the theme.  They try on animal costumes, fruit costumes, community helper costumes, and even SCARY guy costumes.  Thankfully, the Three Ghost Friends eventually find the perfect costumes to wear.

One of the key learning objectives of this book is to teach categorization.  I am always looking for a way to extend learning beyond a book's pages or iPad screen.  My family came up with a game that we had so much fun playing and we hope you enjoy it too.  It is called "GUESS WHAT COSTUME!"

Directions:
1.  Download and print all the costumes.
2.  Cut and glue each costume on index cards.
3.  Download and print copies of the Guess What Costume! Checklist for each player.
4.  Without looking, each player selects a costume card and places it on their head. (We actually all wore hats and taped the card to our hat or you could just hold it.)
5.  Players take turns asking "Yes or No" questions that will help them try to figure out what costume is on their head. (i.e.  "Is my costume a fruit?"  If the answer is NO, then all the fruit costumes can be crossed off your checklist.)
6.  The first person to correctly identify the costume on their head is the winner.

Click here to download all 26 costumes! Click here to download the checklist! We all sat in a circle with our costume cards taped to our heads.  I had a "Queen" costume. I think my son was trying to look through his hat!  AHHH! She has a zombie on her head!In addition to the Kindle and iBookstore versions of the book, it can be purchased in print from Amazon:


Be sure to check out other activities for the book: Costume Time! and Halloween Sort.

Ready...Set...Decorate!

Once the calendar flips to October 1st my family begins decorating for Halloween.  This year, the Three Ghost Friends have brought us added excitement for one of our favorite holidays.  In the past, we have kept most of our decorating within the house.  However, my wife suggested that we try to make the Three Ghost Friends as a decoration for our front yard.

I was up for the challenge.
I sketched a ghost on each piece of wood.  My daughter helped trace the sketches with a Sharpie marker. "Watch out! Dad has a saw!" -- Luckily, no one lost any fingers in the making of these ghosts. I owe a big "Thank You" to my brother-in-law for bravely holding the board while I cut. We primed the wood before calling it a night. Early the next morning, we added a coat of white paint.  Thankfully, I have lots of helpers! He looks clean in this picture, but paint was everywhere.  I enlarged and printed a ghost face to trace onto the cut-out of the ghost. The perfectionist in me came out when I needed to measure to make sure the eyes and mouth were in the correction location. I painted the eyes and mouth onto each ghost.  Now, we need to have all the kids in the neighborhood over to the house for one big picture!  Three ghost friends.Three Ghost Friends books are available as eBooks on Amazon.com and at the iBookstore. Print versions of the books also can be purchased as Halloween gifts on Amazon.com.

Halloween Activity Link-Up

My family is so excited for Halloween this year and we are looking for some new ideas for our celebrations.

Do you have a blog post that shares a free printable, a cool craft, a fun recipe, or a kid-friendly activity?

Add your link and please share this page with other bloggers.



Happy Halloween!

NOW IN PRINT!

Just in time for Halloween! All 4 of the Three Ghost Friends books are available in print at Amazon.com.  Buy your favorite book or buy all four!  If you want them all -- you will be rewarded with 1 FREE book.  Amazon currently has them listed under their 4 for 3 promotion. Click Here to Order from Amazon!

We Found Our "Trick or Treat" Treat!

Today we found the perfect treat to give out for "Trick or Treat"! Three Ghost Friends Peeps!

Proof Copies Arrived!

I received PROOF copies of all my Three Ghost Friends books! Soon they will be available in print! I will keep you posted!

Three Ghost Friends - COSTUME TIME!

How many days until Halloween? Too many! But, I have been busy making activities for the latest Three Ghost Friends book, Three Ghost Friends: Learn About the ABCs - Halloween Edition. In this book, the Three Ghost Friends hope to find just the right costumes to wear for Trick or Treat.  It proves to be difficult with at least one ghost friend not wanting to follow the theme.  They try on animal costumes, fruit costumes, community helper costumes, and even SCARY guy costumes.  Thankfully, the Three Ghost Friends eventually find the perfect costumes to wear.

From the moment the book was complete, I wanted to create a way for children to have fun dressing up the Three Ghost Friends in all the costumes. Additionally, I also wanted to provide a way for parents and teachers to explore the concept of categorizing with their child or student.

I met both of those goals with the FREE printable activity kit, COSTUME TIME!, which includes the Three Ghost Friends and all of the costumes they try on at the A to Z Costume Shop.

Click here to download the activity packet.My family tried two activities with the FREE printables:

Letter Costume Match

1. Laminate the Three Ghost Friends game board.
2. Write a letter on each line below the ghosts with a dry erase marker.
3. The child will match the costume with the same beginning letter to the letter on the line.

Category Ghosts

1. Lay many costumes in front of the child.
2. Encourage them to dress the Three Ghost Friends in costumes that match (fruits, water animals, etc.)
3. Determine if providing the category or having the child suggest the category work best for your situation.

My daughter wrote letters on the line. A is for an apple costume.  B is for a banana costume. C is for a cherry costume.  More costumes matched to their letter - a doctor, an engineer, a firefighter. In this example, we wrote "animals" on the game board and laid out many costumes.  My two year old son found the "animal" costumes and dressed the ghosts. These were all the land animals from the book - a lion, a kangaroo, a jaguar.   Next, he tried the water animals -- a manatee, a narwhal, and an octopus! Remember, there are 3 other Three Ghost Friends books and over 40 activity ideas if you need more things to keep you children busy and learning before Halloween!

Shape Ghost Rice Krispies Treats!

I saw a really cool idea for Rice Krispie Treat Ghosts on Pinterest. They looked awesome but I knew I wouldn't be able to replicate them as nice as the picture.  However, I could put a Three Ghost Friends spin on the idea.

In the book, Three Ghost Friends: Learn About Shapes the ghosts play hide-and-go-seek at a campground.  When they hide inside things they appear to look like circles, squares, triangles, ovals, rectangles, and trapezoids.
Currently available at the iBookstore and Amazon.com!My two boys and I decided to challenge ourselves to make the ghost shapes out of Rice Krispie Treats.  Of course, we had to read the book on the iPad first!
Yes, my youngest son has a marshmallow hanging out of his mouth for this picture. My son did a pretty good job pouring the Rice Krispies himself. My sons loved how sticky the marshmallow was when we added it to the bowl.  We greased our pan, pushed the Rice Krispies and marshmallow mixture in, and then flipped it onto a cookie sheet. Now it was time to cut out the shapes.  My son used a cup to cut out a circle. I cut out a trapezoid and my son realized that you can make 3 triangles from it! We added lollipop sticks to each shape ghost just for fun!

Three Ghost Friends Halloween Juice Box Covers

School Halloween Parties are approaching! I made a FREE printable template to wrap around juice boxes for kids to enjoy.
Remove the straw from the juice box, tape the printable on the box, and then slide the straw between the printable and the juice box! This is an image of the full printable template. Links to download are below.
Two printable templates are currently available for:Juicy Juice FruitfulsMinute Maid
This is Three Ghost Friends: Learn About the ABCs - Halloween Edition on a Mac using the Kindle Reader.Three Ghost Friends eBooks are now available at Amazon.com for Kindle.  The Kindle Reader,  available for desktop and laptop computers, allows eBooks to be displayed through a projector for the whole class to enjoy. This would be a great activity for school Halloween Party!