Kid Reading and Arts and Crafts: Halloween Decorations to practice cutting

We came home one afternoon from school and my son was ready to craft after reading a bunch of his Halloween books.  I had to think on the fly but I came up with a few projects from things around the house. Do you ever find yourself digging for craft projects around the house when your child says that they want to do something?  I am never prepared because I come up with ideas and he wants to do a million crafts so I have to come up with more while he was working on his first project.

The first was a ghost.  I used a plain white piece of scrap paper and rolled it into a tube to see how big it would be.  Then, he drew a face in the middle.  My son glued the edge and held it with his hands.  This works on his patience and his hand eye coordination to make sure he is holding the right part.  I stapled the top just in case.  He folded another piece of paper into four even (ish) pieces and cut along the line to make four strips.  We glued and held each strip on to the ghost.  Then, we attached a string to hang up the ghost.  My son named him ghost.

Next, he wanted to make a bat.  Well, I didn't have any bats ready to go so I drew the outline of one and he drew on the eyes and cut it out.  I quickly went to the computer and printed two different bats.  He cut out the black one and we punched a hole in top and hung them from the chandelier.

I had enough time to make it ahead of the game so I got the paper to do a jack o lantern pumpkin.

I also grabbed the supplies to make a ghost.

He decided that he wanted to make the ghost first.  We drew the outline of the ghost in white crayon and my son decided that he should have crazy eyes.  We used the regular glue because I thought that it would stick better then the glue stick. 

We stretched the cotton balls and stuck them on the ghost so that you could still see the eyes and the mouth that got drawn on at the last minute.

We went to the pumpkin next to make an interesting jack o lantern.

He drew the outline on the orange paper and then cut some shapes.  We didn't attach them until he could move them around and decide what would be each part.  He colored the one eye orange after it was all done.  He used the glue stick to get them put exactly where he wanted it.

We then moved on to Ii because he was doing it in school and Jj for jack o lantern.  He used the dot markers to make the letters in designs.

He was having such a fun time with the dot markers that I made another picture for him to use the dot markers on and trace the letter J.  Yup, I told you that when he starts crafting that he likes to keep going and going.

Then, he used the dot marker to color the other bat.  He was going to make dots and then he used it to color in the whole bat before cutting it out.  We hung this one up with the other two bats.

I ran out of steam and just couldn't do anymore but I decided to pull together a few more to do on another day.  We did a bunch of Halloween activity sheets with mazes, dot to dots, and find the differences on another day.  The next day we did some more dot marker Halloween pictures.  He was busy with lots of Halloween crafts through the last week and I think that he is going to be super excited to finally get to Halloween!!

Remember to get a few good Halloween books from the library or get a few books that you get to pull out every year.  We got some of these at yard sales and book sales and I get to pull them up each year and my son thinks that they are brand new.  Hope you read a few Halloween books to inspire the Halloween crafts.

Shared on Blog Strut Halloween at We Made That