Monsters, Skeletons and Witches, Oh My!

MONSTERS
Here's a cute hand print monster I'm sure you've seen before. I used green paint on the palm and black paint on the fingers. (I didn't paint the thumb at all.)  After the kids made their print, I painted a little green neck.

When it was dry, I cut them out (leaving some space around the neck to add the bolts) and the kids added wiggle eyes and used Sharpies to draw the rest of the face and some scars and stitches.

Then I painted some gray bolts and cut around those when they were dry. This could definitely be done at the same time as the hand print. I don't know why I waited until the end. Also, for the girl monsters, and mine, I painted a white zigzag on the hair.

They turned out really cute!

I printed out a sign that said, "My Little Monsters" and hung them on my door.

SKELETONS
This one isn't a craft, but it's a fun thing you can do in the classroom. I brought in a skeleton, named Mr. Bones, and taped him to our bathroom door.

I told the kids he was there to make sure they weren't being silly. Well, when the kids are out of the room or sleeping at nap time, I change him up a bit, so he's the one being silly.

They just love it! Most of them know it's me (I think), but they still get a kick out of seeing Mr. Bones being silly. Tomorrow I need to find a costume to put on him!
WITCHES
I shared this craft last year, but they are so stinkin' cute, I wanted to share a picture of how they turned out this year.

To find out how we made these witch legs, click here!

Webs with Hanging Spiders

We did this craft a couple weeks ago, but I haven't gotten around to sharing it until now. It's a simple glitter spider web with a little surprise hanging from it. Before beginning this project, we spent several minutes going over ways to make a spider web. One of the easiest is to make a cross, then an X, then a big circle, a little circle, and a small circle. We practiced it in the air with our fingers. Then I got out glue bottles and black construction paper. The kids did a great job remembering how to make a web!

I added a string to one corner of the spider web and squished it in the glue. Then I put them in a box (ones we use for marble painting) and the kids shook on the glitter. This was so the glitter didn't get all over the place.

I offered several colors of glitter and the kids could use as many or as few as they wanted. We had halloween colors: purple, green, silver, and two shades of orange. When they were dry, I tied a glow-in-the-dark spider ring to each string. They turned out really cool!

The kids can't wait until I send these home so they can cut the spider rings off and wear them!

Fun Fact: Although all spiders make silk, not all of them make webs.

Puffy Paint Pumpkins

Here's a simple project that the kids loved. I mixed up some shaving cream, Elmer's glue and food coloring to make orange and green puffy paint. The kids painted a pumpkin shape that I had glued to black paper (just like our Pop Rocks Pumpkins, only different colors). I reminded the kids to paint it on really thick and not spread it out a lot. That would make it puffy when it dried.

I had cut out a bunch of triangles from black craft foam. The kids added a face to their pumpkin. Even though the paint was made with glue, we still used a little glue on the craft foam, just in case.

For the mouths, I cut out semicircles,

and cut out the number of teeth each child asked for.

The orange ended up drying much darker, which was a nice surprise.

I still have a few more Halloween crafts for you, so stay tuned!

Adorable Spiders

Yeah, that's right. Adorable spiders.

Told you! That's my little girl. I used her face on my example. I got this idea from Mrs. Butterfield's First Grade. The kids painted 2-inch styrofoam balls. I stuck toothpicks in them so they could have something to hold on to while they painted.

Then I stuck them in a big piece of cardboard to dry.

I took pictures of the kids sticking pipe cleaners in them, but they seem to have vanished. What I did was use a sharpie to make 8 dots, 4 on each side of the ball, and that's where the kids put the pipe cleaners. (Each leg was half of a pipe cleaner.) I had taken pictures of the kids making a "spider face," whatever that meant to them. Then I cut them out and used a glue dot to attach them to the styrofoam ball.

So cute! I considered having them add 6 wiggle eyes to their head, so the spider would have 8 eyes, but I liked them too much as is.

I hung them from the lights by sticking paper clips into them.

Ain't she sweet? Love that look she's giving me. And speaking of my daughter, here is a pumpkin baby she gave to her day care teacher:

I got the idea from a Family Fun magazine. I found a small pumpkin with a long curly stem. I used a sharpie to draw the eyes and tied a ribbon on the stem.

I cut the nipple off a pacifier and used hot glue to attach it to the pumpkin.

(Thanks to my honey for taking those fancy photos!)
I had to snap a quick photo of Elise with the pumpkin before we left this morning.

I might have to make another one to keep here at home!

Wickedly Cute Witches

Very often I have an art project planned and at the last minute I'll think of a better way, a more fun way, or a cuter way to do it. And then I'm scrambling that morning to get it ready. That's what happened today. I used this coloring sheet as my template for a witch:

I enlarged it a bit, then traced all the pieces onto construction paper and cut them out. I changed the face of the witch because I didn't really like the one in the picture. I put together my example for the kids, using yarn for hair.

It definitely looked like a witch, but it wasn't cute enough and it was a little boring. They would all look too much alike. So this morning it dawned on me to use a hand print for the witch head! I tried it a couple times and, although not perfect, I really liked it! So I painted the kids' hands and thumbs green, and painted their fingers black. I didn't paint their index finger because it would get in the way of the cape.

To make the print, they kept their fingers together, but put their thumb out as far as possible. When dry and cut out, the kids glued a hat on it and added the other pieces to complete their witch. The broom went on last. They glued on a colored wiggle eye and drew in a mouth.

OK, so the nose might be a bit long, and the cape doesn't quite fit right because there is no neck. But I thought they were much cuter than my example!

Some hand prints seemed to work better than others.

But they are all darling! I hung them in the hall with the words "Wickedly Cute."

I would have loved to have used pictures of the kids for the faces, but I only have two girls in my class. I wasn't sure how the boys would feel about being witches!

Pop Rocks Pumpkins

Let me start off by saying this is a sticky, sticky, STICKY project!! Ever since we made art with Kool-Aid powder (sprinkling it onto paper and spraying it with water), I've wanted to try the same thing with Pop Rocks. Well, it didn't work. The color from the Pop Rocks did not bleed off onto the paper. So I tried something else. Glue. First I cut out pumpkin shapes from orange card stock and glued them to green construction paper. The kids painted glue onto the pumpkins.

Then they sprinkled Pop Rocks onto the pumpkins. (I bought a pack of 3 Pumpkin Patch Orange Pop Rocks at Target.)

Luckily, I tried this project out on my own first. I noticed the Pop Rocks got sticky and clumped together very quickly outside of the bag. If I had not made my own first, I would have dumped them all in a bowl for the kids to use. So instead I dumped a few in my hand and the kids took a pinch or two as needed.

As soon as the Pop Rocks hit the glue, they started making popping noises! That was the cool part.

The longer they sat, the more bubbly and fizzy they got.

And very, very sticky. They never actually dried. I thought they looked cool so I hung them on the wall.

Within minutes I saw they were starting to drip.

Boo. So I took them down, covered them with plastic wrap and sent them home. Between the wreaths, pumpkin stamping and the Pop Rocks, I think I'm done using candy for art. For a little while, anyway!