Children can add personalize touches to store-bought Halloween decorations with handmade ornaments – or they can use recycled and inexpensive items found around the house to create several decorations in an afternoon of craft-making. Time the craft projects so kids are working on one project while waiting for another to dry.
Make the paper towel ghosts while waiting for the glue to dry on the egg carton pumpkins. Then, paint the pumpkins. Work on the spiral mobile as the paint dries. Add the final touches to the jack-o-lanterns and then put the decorations on display.
Egg Carton Pumpkins or Jack-O-Lanterns
Cut apart the cups from a cardboard egg carton. Trim the cups so the open ends are smooth instead of jagged. Squeeze white glue along the cut edge of one of the cups. Take another cup and place it on top. Hold for a minute or two so the glue sticks. Repeat with the other cups to create a total of six pumpkins-to-be.
When the glue has dried, paint the shapes with orange tempera paint. After the paint dries, use a fine-tip black marker to draw jack-o-lantern faces (try to make each face different). As an option, don’t draw faces but use a brown or black marker to draw lines from the top to the bottom of the pumpkin to define the sections of a pumpkin. Cut six short pieces from a brown pipe cleaner. Poke into the top of the pumpkin for the stem.
Halloween Mobile
Place a bowl or small plate on a piece of orange construction paper and trace the round shape. Cut out the orange circle. Turn the circle into a spring by drawing a continuous circular line starting in the center of the circle and drawing larger circles. Keep the lines at least a half inch wide so the paper doesn’t tear easily when the spiral is opened. Pull open the spring and use a hole-punch to make one hole in each layer of the spiral. Tie a piece of string on each hole.
On black construction paper, draw shapes such cats, bats, spiders, and witch’s hats. Draw ghosts out of white construction paper. Make the shapes two-to-three inches in size. Punch a hole in each shape and tie to the free ends of string along the orange spiral. Leave the hole at the top free of ornament and tie on a longer string that allows for hanging the mobile.
Gauzy Ghosts
Scrunch up a piece of paper towel into a rough ball shape. Next, place another piece of white paper towel or a square of cheesecloth over the top of the ball and pinch it tight under the ball. Wrap a piece of white yarn around this neck and knot it in place. Leave some extra yarn free to hang the ghost. Use a black crayon to draw on a face. (Be very gentle if marker is used instead of crayon as the paper towel may tear.) Make lots of ghosts and hang around the home.
Make a spooky mobile, jack-o-lantern patch, and a gathering of ghosts to decorate the home for Halloween. In an afternoon, kids can get ready their home or classroom for a Halloween party or seasonal fun. With a little more time, children can create a spider web decoration around a balloon and decorate it with egg carton spiders. Each project costs only pennies to make and each can be created in fifteen-to-sixty minutes.
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