Halloween is a top favorite holiday for us creative crafts & home decorating folks, isn’t it?! Well, to me it is, whether that Halloween decoration, craft and home decor is just cute, a bit spooky, or really scary.
But most of all, Halloween is a fest for kids. And no matter where I’ve lived, somehow I always find myself doing Halloween crafts with kids. It’s fun! I just love to see how this holiday more than other holidays is just a starting point for wild fantasies. Kids can be so creative and I find it fascinating to watch their projects. (I’ve been a helping hand in classrooms and at friends’ home for Halloween craft activities.)
At the last Halloween kids play party I helped organize, we had a couple of really cute projects that were easily made by smaller children. They loved making them!
Halloween Project 1: Spiders
That is: hand stamped spiders. You know the ones where they can get to smear paint or tempura on their four fingers (which they looove) and then place them onto craft paper in the shape of a spider. Either glue on layered black on white circles onto the artwork or add craft googly eyes so that the spider comes alive. Ahhhh…
Halloween Project 2: Ghosts
A personal favorite for Halloween is little tissue ghosts. People tend to keep these, as they somehow capture a fantasy and are such an easy Halloween decoration to hang up in the years to follow. Again for this craft, you need things from around the house: some tissues, string / thread, and a black marker. You can use some recycled paper to stuff the head of the ghost, or simply take up another tissue and shape into a ball. Then, take another tissue and hang it over the ball and use the thread to tie it up. Mark two eyes on the ghost and he’s ready to be hung up in the house somewhere. Or in the shed or unexpected places, making it all more … fuuunn..
Halloween Project 3: Trick or Treat – Goodies Bag
This can be as complicated or a simple as the age of the children allows. Teenagers may wish to embellish their bags with fabric paint as well as beads, ribbons and sequins. Toddlers better use some foam stamps or potato stamps to paint on a few pumpkin shapes. Also shapes cut from felt can be glued on. Think of shapes like a black cat or a bat.
Craft shops usually have ready-made canvas bags that you can use for this purpose. To create more complicated designs, let the kids first work out their ideas on a sketch pad. This usually gives far better results. And it is good for the kids to see their ideas materialize.
These 3 children craft ideas for Halloween are a good begin. Halloween crafts are just fun, to make, or to supervise. Besides dressing the kids up in Halloween costumes and giving them candy, playing around with craft paper and Halloweenie stuff is just as good as it gets.
