Giant Spider

So I thought I'd show you a couple huge spiders I've made with the kids in the past. I first drew a big circle on black butcher paper and cut out two. Then I drew a big oval-ish/teardrop shape on the black paper and again cut out two. I stapled the circles together and the ovals together and left an opening on both of the them. The kids then stuffed them both with crumpled up paper. Once they seemed puffy enough, I closed up the openings with more staples, and then stapled the circle to the oval. Can you see a spider in your head yet? Then the kids glued on some eyes made from red craft foam and we added some pedipalps that are beside the mouth with extra thick pipe cleaners. Then I hung the entire thing up from the ceiling in the corner of the room. I added the legs after it was up there. They were made out of black crepe paper, stapled in certain spots to make knees and "ankles." OK, I'll show you now.

I even stayed true to a real spider, attaching all the legs to the front body part. To show you how big it really was, here's a picture of the kids standing under it. They are making faces like they are scared of the spider, but of course I had to blur them.

A few days later I added some of the spider web stuff you can find in the stores around Halloween. That seemed to help support the spider as well.

I made another spider a few years later, but used orange paper (we were all out of black). I liked that better because the kids could color on it and decorate it a bit. We also added fangs that year!

This one was a little smaller than the first, but still big enough to excite the children!

Fun Fact: Spiders actually have 48 knees! They have 6 joints on each of their 8 legs.

Jack-o-Lanterns

Today we started decorating our room for Halloween. We made jack-o-lanterns, like a chinese lantern craft. I actually bought a kit from Oriental Trading because they had paper with orange on one side and yellow on the other, and they had all the face pieces on sticky foam. It only came with the orange paper and foam pieces, but I also added some of my own things. I forgot to take a picture of the kids making them, so I just have pictures of the steps. If you are making your own, you want to fold your paper in half the long way and cut slits along the fold, leaving about one inch of un-cut paper at the edge.

Even if you bought the kit, you still want to make the crease down the middle of the paper so it sticks out the right way. Then open the paper back up.

Use a glue stick to apply glue to the top inch of the paper and add a green strip of paper.

Then staple it into a cylinder shape. Use a glue stick to add the face pieces (or in our case, just peel the backing off the self-adhesive foam pieces).

And then I had the kids wrap a green pipe cleaner around their finger to make a vine.

I attached that with a stapler.

I also added yellow yarn for a handle so the kids could hold it like a real lantern, but for now they are hanging from our ceiling.

Can't wait to make more decorations!

YAH: Homemade Halloween Decor

I spent the weekend putting up all my Halloween decorations and I thought I'd share them with you. First I traced a picture of a bat onto black construction paper and cut out four copies.

Then I taped them to the inside of a lamp shade.

I also made some really tiny ones for another lamp.

I'd like to say I used a hole punch for these, but no. I cut each one out with a regular scissors.

I also cut out some small ghosts, a cat, and a "melting face." I taped them to some glass cylinder candle holders that I got from the dollar store and then wrapped white tissue paper around them. (See my tutorial for those here.) Then I dropped in battery-operated flickering tea lights.

The purple bat lights across the fireplace are for my husband. He loves bats.

Last year I took a wedding photo and turned us into vampires. I used some website, I don't remember which, but I think you can do it through Picnik this year.

My husband can't look at the regular photo now without seeing us as vampires! Anyway, I got that photo out again and added some "scary" books and topped it with a ghost candle that I've had for years. I added the word "Boo" with scrabble tiles to cover up a part of the candle that was broken.

And check out the cutest candy dish ever!

I added some "bleeding" candles that I made by dripping red wax on the white candles.

And I finally finished my pumpkin porch display. I cleaned all the pumpkins, then sprayed them with a clear protective coat to make them shine. (Last year I used vaseline -- this was so much easier!)

I got some very cool gourds this year. That green one is called a swan gourd and those little white ones are called finger or ghost gourds. I just used a black sharpie to draw on a face!

Last year I made a ghost family by spray painting gourds and then using black acrylic paint for the faces.

They looked so cute on my porch!

I like them better than this year's ghosts, but it was a lot more work. Who knows what I'll do next year?!

Pirate Ships

Ever see a child's face light up at the mention of one word? Today that word was pirate. For we didn't make any ol' boat for our transportation theme, we made a pirate ship!

That was last year's ship. This year I went a little smaller. I found a coloring page of a pirate ship and used that as my template. I traced the boats onto several different colors of construction paper. Then I just drew free-hand some sails in different sizes. This year I also decided to make a little flag.

The kids used markers to decorate the boat and sails. Then they wrote the first letter of their name on the flag. I poked two holes in each sail, one at the top and one at the bottom, using a scissors and then put them onto pipe cleaners. The pipe cleaners were taped to the back of the boat and the little flag was taped to the top of one of the pipe cleaners.

The kids couldn't get to the art table fast enough to get started on these.

Name Trains

We made trains today to go along with our transportation theme. I got the idea to do Name Trains from PreKinders. First I cut squares from all different colors of construction paper. Then I used stencils to make letters on the squares.

The kids first drew a railroad track onto large white construction paper. (I cut them in half the long way.) Then they drew in a background.

After that came the letter search. The kids had to find all the letters in their name and put them on the track behind an engine. Once they had it all laid out, they glued it down. Only one name didn't fit onto the paper (Caroline), so we just glued on another piece of paper to the end. I also cut out a bunch of circles from black construction paper for the wheels.

The kids really enjoyed putting their trains together. They also colored the engine and added more of a background if they wanted to.

 

10/14/12 UPDATE:

We made these again this year and they turned out so cute, I wanted to share them again. What I did differently was have the kids use whole pieces of construction paper so they could draw more of a background. And the engines were bigger this year, as well.







Little Vampires

This is a craft from last year. I got the idea from Kaboose, where they made lollipops into vampires. They are very cute, but I decided to do things a little differently. I used craft foam to make circles for the heads and I taped a colored popsicle stick to the back of it. I also used black sticky foam to make hair.

I just used the same size circle for the top of the hair and cut some points into it. I only used sticky-back foam because I already had that on hand, but I was so glad we ended up using it and I'll tell you why later. I also used a standard hole punch to make noses out of the colored foam and cut small triangles out of white foam for the fangs. I set out colored wiggle eyes and black markers. The kids glued everything on the head. Before they glued the teeth, however, they used the black marker to draw the mouth.

I also cut up black garbage bags for the capes. What a pain that was! Do you have any idea how hard it is to cut slippery garbage bags?! Kaboose used black felt, so I think I will try that next time. But here is how I did it. I cut a rectangle about the same size as the vampire head-on-a-stick. Then I cut out two triangles on the sides. Here's my pattern:

With those two triangles cut out, it gave the cape a nice collar. Then the kids picked out a colored ribbon (I offered black, orange, and red) and I used that to hold the cape on. I just tied a bow around the "neck." I think I also used a small drop of glue under the knot of the bow to keep it from slipping off.

That's mine. Yawn. Now check out the kids'.

So cute! And such personality! For my display, I used stencils to spell "We Are Fangtastic" in red letters, but I added some blood drips to each letter.

When I went to staple the vampires to the wall, I just peeled back the hair, put the staple in, and put the hair back in place. It worked great! Usually when you put a staple into craft foam, the indent stays behind even after the staple is removed. So this way I was able to hide the staple, therefore hiding the dent. I wouldn't have been able to do that if the kids used glue to put the hair on.

Man, those little vampires were so adorable!

Halloween Display

Today I want to share with you one of my most favorite halloween displays of my class. I am so proud of myself for putting this together. I did this many years ago when I had a really small class. It's based on the book Inside a House That is Haunted by Alyssa Satin Capucilli.

I had each child dress up as a different character from the book and then took pictures of them. Then I used those pictures and made a huge story. I'll show you the display and then I'll explain it in more detail.

You can click on that picture to see a larger version and hopefully be able to read it, but in case you can't here is what it says:

Here is the [witch] that knocked on the door that startled the [spider] that dropped to the floor that frightened the [ghost] who awoke and cried "BOO!" surprising the [cat] that jumped and screeched, "MEW!" that shook up the [bats] that swooped through the air and jolted the [owl] that called, "Who-Who's there?" that spooked the [mummy] who ran with a shriek rattling the [skeleton] who moved with a creak that woke the monster who stomped on huge feet, threw open the door and heard, "TRICK OR TREAT!" inside a house that is haunted.

Now the book itself has pictures of the mummy, spider, skeleton, and so forth, instead of the words.

So I kept that same idea. The only thing I changed was that there was no witch. It starts with "Here is the hand that knocked on the door" but because I wanted all of my kids' faces in the display, I changed hand to witch. Now for the costumes.
For the witch I brought in a witch hat (from Party City) and a big black shirt (worn by many of the kids) and she held onto a broom stick.

The ghost wore a white sheet, but I kept his face visible.

The mummy was wrapped in toilet paper and the monster was wearing a paper grocery bag over his head. It was painted green and black with some scars on it, and a hole was cut out for the child's face.

The cat was wearing the big black shirt and a cat mask that had whiskers (also from Party City). All of these things that I got from Party City were very cheap and I still find uses for them to this day, so it wasn't a waste of money.

The spider was wearing the big black shirt and a big spider on his head. It was a decoration from Party City.

The bats were wearing big black shirts, of course, and vampire fangs, and ears which I made out of a girl's headband and construction paper. The wings were made out of black butcher paper. I actually took their pictures separately (so I only needed to make one pair of wings and ears) and then overlapped them when I glued them on.

The owl was also wearing a paper grocery bag with a hole cut out for the face. I used torn pieces of construction paper (a couple different shades of brown) and glued them on one by one. And then of course I made the feather tufts (not ears!) on top of the head. I wish I didn't have to blur this little boy's face because his expression was so cute! It really looked like he was saying, "Hoot!" And the skeleton was wearing my nephew's skeleton costume. Simple!

As you can see, I cut out the pictures and put them on orange paper, and cut them out again. The words I printed on my computer and cut up into strips. I glued everything to two black foam boards that were taped together to make it look like a huge storybook.

Oooh, I just love it!