Beating the Post-Halloween Sugar Rush - Modern Parents Messy Kids

Only a few more days until Halloween. Which means there are only a few more days until the overload of sweets and candy begins. Last year, we hid the Halloween candy the day after Halloween, and my daughter was young enough that she forgot about it within a day or two. This year, that is definitely not going to happen. If you are like me and can’t hide the candy, but don’t want your kids eating a ton of it, this super easy art project is for you.

All you need is a piece of heavy cardstock, a crayon or pencil, glue, and assorted candy. If you don’t have heavy cardstock you could use any kind of cardboard, even cut up an old cereal box.

Lightly draw a letter on your piece of cardstock with a crayon or pencil. We did an “A”, the first letter of my daughter’s name.

Help your child squeeze glue along the outline of the letter.

Have your child place pieces of candy all along the outline of the letter, in the line of glue.

This project only takes a few minutes but you can really extend it and use it as a teaching tool. Depending on your child’s age, you can introduce so many concepts.

Some ideas:

spatial reasoning- using the candies that they have, talk about which pieces will fit on which parts of the letter, without veering too far off the line.
themes- by color, size, type of candy, (one letter all chocolate, one letter all hard candy) etc.
patterns- tootsie roll, hershey kiss, tootsie roll, hershey kiss.
textures- hard vs soft, bumpy vs smooth.

Depending on how much Halloween candy you have in your house, you can do all of the letters in your child’s name, or even the whole alphabet!

Happy Halloween!

This is such a fun way to use up all that unwanted Halloween candy… Now I just have to figure out how to keep myself from nibbling at my children’s masterpieces after they’ve gone to bed! Thanks for the great activity and ideas for expanding on it, Kaley.

P.S. Looking for more low-prep and low-stress ways to connect with the family this holiday season? Check out our new eBook, Hands-On Holidays, packed with ideas for make memories crafting, cooking, reading and adventuring together!