Halloween Crafts

She's so focused - love it!

Allison loves craft time at her preschool so I've been inspired to start doing crafts at home with her - trying for a couple times a week. Previously we had just been coloring together but Allison is really enjoying the diversity. I've also noticed it's great for her dexterity and hand-eye coordination as she handles the little pieces. Here are the projects that we've done since mid-October.  If you have ideas for more projects I would love to hear them.



Cotton Ball Ghost:
needed: glue stick, cotton balls, crayons, computer & printer, cardstock
link to my ghost: http://www.coloringbookshop.com/colorpages/halloween/ghost-coloring-page.html
Allison did something similar at preschool which was my inspiration.  I googled "ghost silhouette" images and grabbed a free one (link above).  I copied it into PowerPoint and enlarged the image, then printed it on cardstock.  Allison drew on it a little with an orange crayon, then I rubbed a glue  stick over the ghost and gave her a pile of cotton balls.  It took her a minute to figure out the sticky area, but she had lots of fun.  I wasn't sure if this would last, but the cotton balls are still holding on, and we did this one two weeks ago.


Fall Sticker Art
needed: paper, foam stickers, crayons
This is so versatile and easy.  You could use colored paper or cardstock if you want it to be more durable or go with a theme.  What's shown is just printer paper we had.  I encouraged Allison to color with some 'fall' colored crayons - oranges, browns, yellows, then let her decorate with foam stickers.  I found the fall-themed stickers at Hobby Lobby for $2.99.  It had enough stickers to make 3 of these sheets.  The other two went home with Gigi and Stacey for their fridge collection - theirs had more variety of stickers.  We used the leftovers to make one for us another day.


Decorating a Pumpkin
needed: pumpkin, stickers (we used foam stickers)
We decorated a small pumpkin with foam stickers yesterday for our craft project.  You can use regular stickers too, we had the foam ones on hand.  I really like foam ones for little hands because they don't tear easily and a have more heft for her little fingers.  Allison normally needs me to pull the backing off, so that way mommy is participating too.  She picks out a sticker, hands it to me, I peel, and then she places it.  She gets to do all the creative parts, but I'm still involved with her.  I love when we can do things together.  Afterwards we talked about the colors of the stickers and counted the different shapes (how many stars, how many crosses, etc).