Whether you are an elementary teacher, a home schooling parent, or a parent looking for Halloween crafts for your kids, the scary hand project is fun for all.
The moment autumn comes rolling in, children begin thinking about all the fun they will have on Halloween. They start thinking about what costume they will wear, how much candy they’ll collect, and how they are going to decorate the walls and refrigerator at home. Scary hands are fun to make. The craft encourages children to come of with the scariest Halloween face they can think of and, as an art project, the craft takes only a few inexpensive supplies and can be made in one class sitting.
Elementary Grade Level
The Scary Hands Kids Craft is perfect for children in grades 1-3. Older children may also enjoy designing a monster hand using more elaborate items such as glitter glue, sequins, buttons, and other decorative items.
Project Description or Objective
Children will make monster hands out of construction paper by tracing and cutting out the shape of their hands and gluing a scary face onto the palm of the paper hand.
Materials Needed
- Construction paper in Halloween colors: black, orange, green, yellow, and purple.
- Glue
- Pencil for tracing
Directions
1. Have students choose two sheets of construction paper in contrasting Halloween colors.
2. To make the hand shape, have each child trace his hand and part of his arm, about 3 inches, onto one sheet of construction paper using the pencil. If this is too difficult, allow each student to pair up with a friend so that they can help each other.
3. Have each child cut out his hand and arm shape. Remind children to save their paper scraps to trade with their friends for cutting out face shapes.
4. Glue the cut out paper hand onto the center (or as near to it as possible) of the contrasting construction paper. Make sure the bottom edge of the arm is lined up with the bottom edge of the background paper.
5. Using the scraps of construction paper, have each child cut out two eyes, a nose, and mouth for the palm of the paper hand. Encourage the children to be creative. They can create Jack-o’-lantern faces, skeleton-like faces, ghostly faces, or even toothy faces. Sinister eyebrows can also be cut from slivers of scraps.
6. Have each child glue the face onto the palm of the paper hand.
Handy Monsters at Home
Children at home can take the scary hands craft to new levels of spookiness. With the help of a parent or guardian, children can make a scary hand for all their favorite monsters. There can be a Franken-hand, a vampire, zombie, werewolf, and even a one-eyed Cyclops hand. The only limit is the imagination.
