Spooky Crafts

I love Halloween. However, this year for some reason I don't seem to have made the most of it. Maybe it's because we've had a hellish half term week, have all come down with colds, the weather has been bleak and we are all going a bit stir crazy!

Friday I decided it was time to start getting crafty. Having finally accepted that my seasonal home decorations will no longer be tasteful and sophisticated (pah!) but will now be garish splodgy paintings done by a 2 and a half year old, we got the aprons on and located the paintbrushes.

First we made some handprint spiders, inspired by an idea I saw from @Teach_Preschool. These are so easy to do and very effective. We used black glitter paint (I was very pleased with myself to have found this range of glitter poster paint in Poundland! Oh yes, I always love a bargain.) 

As the spider only calls for the four fingers to be painted, and not the thumb, it was easier to paint it onto the hand rather than let Ruby loose with a plate of paint.  Print one 'half' of the spider, with four legs and the body, then rotate the paper and repeat. Simples.  When the spiders have dried, we drew, cut out and glued on eyes.

As it was so much fun, we all had a go and in the end, we made a rather cute family of spiders: Daddy spider, Mummy spider and Baby spider.

We also coloured in pumpkin templates, did some leaf rubbings and made a spooky haunted house by doing a chalk rubbing on black paper of some plastic 'brass' rubbing templates I had knocking about from Early Learning Centre. With these splodges, I decorated the front window, as an open invitation to the children of the entire neighbourhood to come knocking for sweets/throw eggs at the front door.

And finally, by Sunday afternoon, I eventually got round to carving a pumpkin.  I couldn't quite manage Thomas the Tank Engine as was requested, so we settled for a Charlie & Lola theme instead.  You like?

For fabby crafty ideas to do with kids, may I recommend you follow my favourites @RedTedArt and @Teach_Preschool