It’s October and Halloween is coming! Here are some ideas for fun activities to do with your children.

Go Batty

Paper bats are iconic Halloween images - most commonly the paper kind. But here in Phoenix, you can go see the real things. The Arizona Game and Fish Department advises that Phoenix’s urban bat viewing season runs from May through October.

Each year several thousand Mexican free-tailed bats and western pipistrelle bats use the Maricopa County Flood Control Tunnel near 40th Street and Camelback Road as a day roost.

The bats exit the tunnel just after sunset each night (total exit time; approximately 45 minutes). If you're an early bird, you may just want to see them return around sunrise each morning!

For more information and directions to the tunnel, click here.

Spaghetti Spider Webs

Here’s how to make a spider web out of spaghetti.

1. Draw a spider web on a piece of paper.
2. Cook a pot of spaghetti and drain it. (If you add a few drops of oil to the boiling water, the spaghetti won't stick together.)
3. In a bowl that you don't mind getting messy, mix together the spaghetti and enough glue to coat it.
4. Cover your graph paper web with wax paper.
5. Lay strands of spaghetti on the wax paper, following the design of your web.
6. When the glue has dried, carefully peel the spaghetti web off of the wax paper and hang it up.

(From EducationWorld.com)

Create a Spider That’s Yummy to Eat

These Halloween sandwiches are a creepy-crawly treat for an All Hallow's Eve party or an especially scary school lunch. Treat your child to this frighteningly good Halloween spider sandwich, which is a fun variation on the traditional peanut butter sandwich.

What You Need:

• 2 slices of bread
• Peanut butter
• Pretzel sticks (8 per spider sandwich)
• Raisins
• Toothpicks
• Drinking glass

What You Do:

1. Lay out two slices of bread on a flat surface.
2. Use the rim of the drinking glass as a circular cookie cutter. Place the glass rim side down in the center of the bread and press down to make a circle. Tear the surrounding bread off and repeat with the second piece of bread.
3. Remove the excess bread and save it for another recipe.
4. Spread peanut butter on both of the circles.
5. Now place four pretzel sticks on the side of one circle and four on the other side of the second circle creating a total of 8 spider legs.
6. Close the sandwich with the other circle, peanut butter to peanut butter.
7. Use the toothpick to gently create a small intention in the bread for his spider's eyes.
8. Place raisins in the indentations to give the spider eyes.
9. Now your creepy spider sandwich is ready to eat!

(By Helen Dean on education.com)

Spooky Stories

Treat young readers with a good booooo-k. Here’s a few of our favorite Halloween book selections from The Best Children’s Books and The Children’s Book Review.

Recommended BOOOOKS