Countdown to Halloween - Haunted House Theme

Today is the tenth day of the 13-day Countdown to Halloween. The theme today is "Haunted Houses."

Olivia's haunted house picture that she colored.

With all three of us not feeling up to par today, what we did was quite limited compared to other days. Nonetheless, we had a little food snack and the girls did a quick coloring page with a haunted house theme.

Food 

Bento Lunch had a cute idea for a Halloween-theme lunch. The main part of the lunch had a piece of cheese cut into the shape of a haunted house. So, we tried cutting some different haunted houses from cheese and served them with crackers.

The haunted house shaped cheese and crackers

we had for dinner.

One of the art projects I wanted to have Sophia and Olivia do we didn't have the right kind of ingredient to make the unusual paint. More about that project is below in the section "Art Project."

Coloring Pages

There were two coloring pages of haunted houses (coloring page and another one) that the girls could pick from for filling in with markers. Both chose the same picture to color.

Sophia's picture that she colored.

Art Project

I was going to have the girls do a haunted house coffee painting. The brown tones are great for the eerie look of a haunted house. However, the only coffee I had on hand was coffee that needs to be brewed (versus instant coffee). I found out that coffee for brewing doesn't make water brown...so we will have to wait to do this project another day.

As a reference for the future, these are the steps to the project:

The first step will be to have Sophia and Olivia each set up their work area. They will need to spread out newspaper, have a container filled with water, a thin paintbrush, a coloring sheet that has an image of a haunted house (to use as an example and for ideas), and a piece of white paper. 

In addition, both girls will share small containers of coffee paint. This will be done by mixing different amounts of instant coffee grounds in water. With more coffee grounds, the paint shade is darker.

Next, the girls will be told that the project is to be "drawn" with a paintbrush and that it is essentially a landscape (e.g., no ghosts, zombies, headstones).

After the outlines are done, Sophia and Olivia will fill in their paintings by making as many different tones of brown as they can. Their finished paintings will have a range of white to light to medium to almost black-brown.