I just want to share some crafts I have been doing with my kids recently. I like decorating with home made crafts for any occasion. There is so much you can do for Halloween and there are lots of great and fun creative ideas everywhere.

These two are using recycled materials and will not end up on land fills when Halloween is over.

NAPKIN RINGS

These are a two-day project. First, your children (or child) can paint empty paper towel rolls. I used a non-toxic washable paint and added some glue to get a glossier shine. Since the glue is white it will make your paint color look faded but as the paint and glue dries, the color will come back (since glue dries clear).

My children chose a black color which is a great pick for Halloween!

When the rolls are completely dry, cut them into napkin rings. Let your children/child decorate them with fun Halloween items. We used a glitter glue and attached scary spiders, leaves with fall colors and some stickers.

There are lots of different ways you can decorate your napkin rings!

PUMPKIN WALL DECORATION

This is such a fun painting project (also a two-day project). I used the bottom side of disposable “paper plates.” But the ones I used were not made of paper. They are made from the sugar cane and are therefore biodegradable. The bottom of these plates have a texture that reminds me of a real canvas. It makes painting very fun. Also, since the bottom is sticking out, it makes it ideal for a realistic looking pumpkin.

Instead of letting them paint with orange color, I let them mix yellow with red. (I put the yellow and red paint separately on their palette so that they can experience the mixing of colors). What they got was a nice and soft pumpkin-like color. I have to say I like to let my kids paint on different surfaces than just flat paper. They seem to enjoy the challenge to color all the different angles and they stay so focused and concentrated.

Since we did not blend the colors together there are parts that are more yellow and some parts are more to the red. But I think it adds dimension and life...

Anyway, when the plate has dried you can cut out holes if you wish to make it into a jack-o-lantern. If you choose to do so, you need to cut a yellow paper into a circle and tape/glue it to the other side of the plate. Lastly (which I have not done yet on the picture) you can cut out a stem and some leaves and tape/glue to the top. These could also be hung on your front door.

These home made jack-o-lanterns will help everyone in your home get into the Halloween-spirit.

Oh, one more quick idea that my son came up with is a ghost hand-puppet. Just take a white sock (great to use those socks with a missing pair) and draw eyes and a mouth with a black marker. Done! So easy and I did not even think about it myself…

Have fun and happy halloween!

Here is a fun and simple activity (craft?) for kids to make their hopscotch more exciting. My children love to collect sticks and rocks from our walks to and from the play ground. One day I got the idea to let them paint rocks. Children love to paint and I always look for different materials and surfaces for children to explore. It’s nice to paint something besides flat surfaces like paper. My son recently discovered the game of hopscotch so I thought it was a good idea to paint their rocks for their hopscotch. That way, they get their own special rock and will not confuse it with somebody else’s.

The only issue is that non toxic washable paint does not keep its color too well on the rock. If you have young children who might taste the paint I would use the washable paint anyway, but I used acrylic paint. I took all their clothes of and spread newspapers over the table and covered the floor underneath.

My kids had a lot of fun and learned how you can use objects straight from nature just as well in activities!