Trick-or-treat Countdown

I was inspired by the book Trick or Treat Countdown to create my own countdown to trick-or-treating.  (Are you impressed by how my mind made that leap?) The book counts up from 1 haunted house to 12 creeping cats and then back down again.  The short rhyming text and not too scary illustrations make this a great Halloween book for preschoolers.

I wanted to make a countdown that was easy, helped my kids visualize the number of days until Halloween, and encouraged number recognition. 

I cut shapes from orange and black construction paper.  Our countdown only goes for 10 days so I made 5 orange and 5 black, but obviously you'd need more if you're doing more days.

I glued contrasting construction paper numbers to each shape starting from 10 going to 1.

I hung them all up with twine and clothespins, which I painted orange and black.

Each day before Halloween, we'll take down a number, flip it over, and make it into a monster by decorating it and adding the correct number of "eyes"  We used reinforcement labels from the dollar store, but you could also use google eyes although that would be, um, a lot of eyes.  (I'm sorry I'm too lazy to do the math).

Then we'll hang it back up and do it again the next day!