Get Crafty this Halloween!

Well it's really not long till Halloween, the months are soon going by and October will be here before we know it. I actually don't mind Halloween, I like seeing the children dressed up and think as long as they're polite and courteous I have no problem giving a few treats out. With Alfie being a little more aware about what Halloween is about this article gives some really great ideas about what you can do with your children to get them in the mood for this spooky season.

Get Crafty This Halloween

Carving a Jack-o’-Lantern from an oversized pumpkin is not the only arts and crafts activity you can do with your little ones this Halloween. It’s a perfect opportunity to create weird and wonderful characters using a whole host of materials. Here are some alternative craft ideas to get your creative juices flowing and hopefully give trick-or-treaters a little fright.

Create a Comic Strip

There are plenty of ghostly characters that can appear in your Halloween comic. Just come up with a simple story involving a vampire, werewolf or witch and get creating. If you don’t know what story to tell look up some kid friendly ghost stories online.

Scary Statues

There’s a variety of materials you can purchase from arts and crafts suppliers such as George Weil to make statues to accompany the lonely jack-o’-lantern on your door step. Air-drying clay witches could hang from your kitchen ceiling or papier mache Frankensteins might patrol your window sills.

Costumes

Your child could have the most original costume on the street if you use your creative skills to produce it yourselves. An old white bed sheet is enough to turn your smallest into a terrifying ghost but with a little imagination (and face paint) you could have a convincing zombie. If you have some white tape and black clothing you can also make your own skeleton costume.

Decorations

With some old black socks and toilet roll tubes you can have your own bats hanging in the garden. Pipe cleaner spiders are another creepy way to welcome trick-or-treaters.

Paint a Halloweeny Scene

Get them to practice their painting skills with a scene of a haunted house or ghost ship. Alternatively, paint ghostly portraits to frame and put up around the house.

Halloween Cards

It may not a traditional greetings card holiday but why let that stop you making a few spooky ones to send to family and friends. You could use old birthday cards and give them a creep twist or create your own from scratch using sugar paper.

Alternative jack-o’-lanterns

If you are not a fan of scooping out gooey pumpkin, try a novel way of making a halloweeny lantern. Alternative jack-o’-lanterns include painted jars, Japanese paper lanterns or our old friend paper mache.

Puppets

There’s a number of different types of puppets you can make for a frightening show. Finger puppets can easily be made from pipe cleaners. Felt lends itself will to hand puppets or you could even put on a spooky shadow puppet show by making shapes out of card and putting them together using split pins.

Potato Stamps

Carve popular Halloween shapes such as skulls or Dracula faces into potatoes to create stamps to decorate trick or treat bags. Potato stamps are an activity that can be rolled out at any time of year.