This Halloween, encourage your kids to get creative. Here are a few fun and easy crafts your little ones will love making.
1. Felt critters
Cut pieces of felt into various shapes and glue them together to make insects, animals and fantastical creatures. For young crafters, you can trace out the desired shapes with a marker and get them to simply cut along the lines. Use pompoms, buttons and bits of yarn to add the finishing touches.
To create a spooky spider, for example, cut out a large black circle for the body, two medium white circles for the eyes and two small black circles for the pupils. Attach eight same-sized pieces of black pipe cleaner to make the legs.
2. Mason jar lanterns
To create a spooky lantern, paint the outside of a Mason jar with the face of a jack-o’-lantern. Another idea is to make it look like the lantern is covered in creepy crawlies by filling it with plastic insects and cotton cobwebs. Alternatively, you can fill the jar halfway with dried leaves, flowers and pebbles to create a more fall-like look.
Once the jar is ready, place a battery-powered tealight inside. The flickering candle will cast the perfect eerie glow.
3. Toilet roll monsters
Make ghosts, vampires and other Halloween monsters out of empty toilet paper rolls. Use the tubes as torsos for your spooky creatures, then create horns, wings, fangs and other eerie features with markers, paint, construction paper, pipe cleaners and other odds and ends you have around the house.
To make a mummy, for example, wrap the roll in strips of gauze or paper towel. Or, to bring your very own Frankenstein to life, use green paint and black felt for the hair.
All three of these crafts can be made with objects found around your home and adapted to your children’s ages and abilities. Use the crafts you make to help decorate your home, design a haunted house or put on a spooky puppet show.
