My Halloween Display

By now some of you probably know I love making class displays in the hallway for different seasons and holidays. It's one of my favorite things to do. It usually involves a picture of each child in some form or another. This time, I first traced each child's foot (without a shoe, but with a sock on) onto white paper. Then I made the word BOO out of orange construction paper and glued it to black construction paper and took a picture of each child holding the Boo sign.

Some made a scary face and some just smiled. Then I cut out their picture and their foot ghost. I put their picture behind their ghost, held it up to the light so I could see through it, and made pencil marks where their eyes were. I used a hole punch to make the eye holes. Then I glued their picture to a black piece of paper and put their ghost on top, taping just the top of it to the black paper so it could be lifted up.

I thought it would be fun for the parents to guess which ghost is their child, so I made a little sign:

If you can't read it, it says:
"Look at all the ghosts
And guess who is who.
Then lift them up
To see who says Boo!"

And because we used feet to make our ghosts, I decided to title this display, "Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet!"

Pretty cool, don't you think?

I did a similar display several years ago, but the kids made any costume they wished by drawing it on paper. Then I punched out the eye holes and put a picture of the kid underneath. I wasn't sure if all of my kids in my current class would be able to draw a costume, so I thought ghosts would be cute. (See my Halloween displays from the past here and here.)
I also brought in a little treat for my co-workers.

Can you guess why I would bring in pink baby booties? That's right! I found out on Friday that I'm having a girl!! I thought of making mummy cupcakes and sticking little pink pacifiers in them where a mouth would be, but I honestly didn't feel like doing all the work. (I did find cute party favor pacifiers at Party City that would have been perfect, though!) Find out how I made these super easy booties here!

Paper Plate Ghosts

I saw this easy ghost craft on Kaboose and thought it would be perfect for a Friday. (I like to end the week with simple crafts!) We used little paper plates and didn't bother making arms. First the kids made a face on the plate using markers.

 Then they flipped it over and glued on white crepe paper streamers.

That's it!

I hung them from the lights of our classroom.

I'm excited to make more decorations for our room next week!

Felt Ghost Treat Holder

Several years ago (probably close to a decade), one of my sisters bought me a cute felt ghost that had a little pouch for treats.

The felt pieces were sewn together and the eyes, mouth and bow were glued on. The words were embroidered to the pouch. I immediately thought how easy that would be to make myself -- and without having to sew or embroider anything! I've made this for a few friends in the past, but I've also done it with my class a couple of times. And once I even used construction paper instead of felt and it still turned out cute. First I made a template by tracing the ghost.

(I put it on black felt so it would be easier for you to see.) Then I traced the whole ghost onto white felt and also traced the bottom part a second time to make the pouch.

The felt I used for this example was really thin. I'd recommend a thicker piece so you can't see through it. Anyway, I used craft glue around the pouch, except for the top, and glued it onto the ghost. I glued on wiggle eyes and a black felt mouth. (I chose to make my mouth open instead of a smile.) And I glued on orange ribbon for the bow. To hang it, I used a hole punch at the top and tied black ribbon on. But I think gluing it to the back of the head would work as well. I used puffy paint to write "BOO!" on the pouch. I didn't have any candy on hand, so I stuck a pencil in the pouch for this picture. Imagine a sucker or little Twix bar sticking out. Much cuter.

Then you can hang it on a doorknob or give it away to someone special!

I honestly think my version is cuter! What do you think?

Candy Corn Necklace Craft

Here is a simple way to do a candy corn craft. We made ours into necklaces, but it could also just hang as decoration. Each child painted a small paper plate. The outside was painted yellow,

next was orange,

and the center was left white.

During nap time, I cut the plate into eighths. This could have easily been done by the kids to give them some extra cutting practice, but I had the time so I did it myself.

The white tips were a little sharp, so I rounded them out a bit with a scissors. They will be wearing them as necklaces, after all! As the kids woke up, I called them over one at a time to attach the candy corn pieces to some yarn. We just taped the yarn to the back. Then I tied it around their necks!

Now, when I thought of this craft I imagined the pieces were smaller. And it would probably be cuter smaller, but when you have small paper plates on hand, it seems silly to cut smaller circles out of white paper. Right? And the kids didn't seem to mind having such big necklaces. To end our day, I brought in some candy corn cupcakes I made over the weekend. I just divided the batter and used food coloring to make it yellow and orange. And then white frosting was on top.

I used a yellow cake mix instead of white, which is why the colors aren't very vibrant. But white cake has no flavor to me, and I'd rather have a cupcake that tastes good than one that looks good.

YAH: Halloween Silhouette Candles

Last year I showed you some of my Halloween decorations, including the candles on my mantle.

I redid one of them this year, so I thought I'd share with you how I made them. They are very simple and cheap to make. The reason I changed one was because I had all these tiny bats that I cut out for this lamp:

Well, I no longer use that lamp but I loved the look of the bats. I was trying to figure out where else I could put them when I thought of my candles on the mantle. I never really liked the ghosts on one of them, so I decided to replace them with bats. I started with a clear cylinder candle holder.

I got mine from the dollar store many years ago. Any size will do. I cut some white tissue paper to the appropriate size (using the candle holder as my measuring tool). Then I taped one end down.

I wrapped it around once and taped on my bats. Don't worry if the bats aren't flat against the glass. The next layer of tissue paper will hold them down.

You could probably tape them right to the glass, but I did it this way. I knew I wanted two layers of tissue and I wasn't sure how well the bats would show up under two layers. Anyway, I wrapped the tissue paper around one more time and taped it in back.

Here is this year's trio:

Then I put battery-operated flickering tea lights inside each one and set them on my mantle.

I like the bats so much better than the ghosts of years past. (Sounds kind of creepy!) The cat shows up the best because it's in a smaller holder.

But my favorite is the melting face.

So scary looking, right?

Cork Boats

Our theme this week is Transportation, and today's topic was boats. I have a ton of corks lying around. I bought a bunch online when I made a wine cork wreath several years ago and then my dad gave me a whole bag of corks that he's been saving for years. So I dug those out and put them in groups of 3 so they were all similar in size. Then I hot-glued them together.

At school, the kids painted the corks.

They painted them on little pieces of paper so I would be able to carry them to the drying table without getting my fingers full of paint. They could paint the top and sides if they wanted, but they didn't paint the bottom. While the corks were drying, the kids went to another table to make a quick sail. I just cut out little sails from construction paper. The kids used paper punch pieces (that were left over from a project we did last week) to decorate their sails.

Then they picked out a colored toothpick and I taped on the sail. When the corks were dry, I stuck the toothpick in the middle cork.

And then, the best part -- we filled our sink so we could see them float!

The kids were amazed that they actually floated! And when I showed them what happens when you blow on them, they were all excited to get them home in their bathtub so they could have races! (And one sweetie even mentioned putting it in his toilet! I told them all not to do that or I would definitely be hearing about it from their parents tomorrow morning!)
Note: Some of the paint started to run in the water, so you might want to use waterproof paint, or at least not washable paint!

**Linking up to the parties on my sidebar!**

Doctor's Kit

To end our Community Helper week, we learned about EMTs. (E was also our letter of the week so it worked out great!) I decided the kids could make little doctor's kits that I've seen several places online. But instead of using real items (I didn't want to "waste" our first aid supplies), I found clip art of different medical supplies and printed them out on one piece of paper. (UPDATE: If you want a free copy of this, please e-mail me at tippytoecrafts@gmail.com!)

That "toilet paper roll" (as my husband called it) is gauze, and my kids called the bandage wrap a sleeping bag! First the kids colored all the pictures.

Then they grabbed a doctor's bag (which I made by folding construction paper in half so it would open up), a white circle and two red rectangles.

They glued the circle and made a red cross on the front of the bag.

Then they cut out all their medical supplies.

They did a great job and never complained, even though it was a lot of cutting!

Finally, they opened their bags and glued all the pieces inside.

It was easiest to glue the two big pieces down first, then glue the smaller items around them.

On the handle of the bag, I wrote the child's name with "Dr" in front of it.

They turned out very cute and the kids got lots of fine motor practice!