Hallo-wallo-ween

I realize that these are beyond late, but maybe you'll want to do some of these next year! Henrik informed me for weeks that as the sun set, Halloween was getting closer and we didn't have any decorations out! I quickly had to change that, so we did a few projects and decorated our kitchen so we could really get in the spirit without breaking the bank and using what we already had!

Because we already studied the body and did a segment on bones, I decided to re-use our skeletons as an easy wall ornament. I picked up some spider garland and some tissue paper ornaments and we did the rest! 

GHOST FEET:

My boys LOVE getting painted so of course we had to do ghost feet! Plus, it's a cute way to remember how "little" they were, though these size 7 and 9 feet aren't so tiny any more. 

To make it a little more fun, I had the boys put googly eyes on their ghosts, it just makes them pop a little more. One of the things I like most about these ghosts is that they don't have the same size eyes. This was THEIR project and they got to make it however they wanted, and that's important to me. In just about every craft or project we do. There are sometimes when I want them to follow specific instructions to complete a task, but for the majority of the time, I want their art to be their art. 

Hand-Eye Coordination Pumpkins:

Before we did this project, I talked to the boys about what a Jack-o-lantern was and they insisted I was incorrect on the term Jack-o-lantern, so we have pumpkins, with faces. I explained to them that we would carve our pumpkins, gut them and cut faces into them so that we could put them on our porch on Halloween Night. I told them that this was going to be similar in that we were making pumpkin faces, but they had to cut it with paper! 

Henrik has been using scissors at school, and has actually gotten pretty good, Theo desperately wants to be like his brother and tries very hard to use them but he wasn't as successful, I ended up helping him based off of the single cuts he made. 

After we cut, I gave them glue and had them paint their pumpkin with rubber cement (not my favorite choice, but I ran out of glue!). They then got to decide what kind of face they wanted to make! This was the best part! I love how Henrik wanted to make three eyes, a nose and a mouth, and Theodor wanted to make all eyes and a mouth. I love seeing their creativity! 

GHOST BANNER:

This is a project that I let Henrik do only, because we used a permanent marker, but any child could have colored these cups. The objective here is to take your white cups and make ghost faces on them, any kind. Henrik and I laughed as we made angry eyes, scared eyes and happy eyes on our ghost cups. 

But the best part of this project was when Henrik took over and decided that he was going to write BOO on the cups. He did it all himself, and copied a picture frame that had that text on it (all by himself!) We had the intention of hanging these ghosts like garland over our decoration table, but Henrik decided that he liked them so much that he wanted them off the string so he could play with them.

MASKING TAPE MUMMY:

The boys and I each did this project, but we did it at different times, it was nice to have one-on-one time with each boy for an activity for a change. For these mummy decorations, I first drew the outline of a mummy with a pen. Then I ripped up pieces of masking tape and gave them to Henrik to place along the mummy outline until the whole thing was covered.

Once it was covered, we went over to the hot glue gun and Henrik got to pick out how many eyes he wanted his mummy to have. I used the glue gun as he quickly placed the eyes on the paper and in a matter of seconds, we had a spooky masterpiece! 

SPOOKY SPIDERS:

As we were placing our decorations up, I asked Henrik if we were missing anything, and he yelled SPIDERS! So I had to come up with a way to make spiders with what we had laying around. Low and behold, I came up with the perfect solution! CUPCAKE paper! I took the cupcake foils and poked pipe cleaners through. The boys got to pick their colors, of course. After the legs went in, I let the boys decorate the cupcake holder while I warmed up the hot glue gun. While we waited, we discussed arachnids and how cool they were, especially since they have more than two eyes! This made Henrik pretty excited, and he picked out several eyes for his, Theodor on the other hand, wanted just one. 

These were quick and easy, under 15 minutes from start to finish, and they are adorable additions to our table!

TARGET DECORATIONS:
Target always has fun stuff in their dollar bins, and just before Halloween, the boys' got a package! Inside were a few fun and easy projects for them to do to get in the holiday spirit.

These masks (Target usually has them for every holiday and season) are easy and fun to decorate with markers, and these water only painting projects are perfect for kids in the 1-2 age range! 

NEIGHBOR TREATS:

The last thing we did before Halloween was make cards and cookies for our neighbors. I always try to teach my kids to be kind and generous, and I want them to know that something so simple can make some one's day. 

I just drew a few Halloween figures on some paper, handed them crayons and Halloween stickers and had them color them in! After that, we baked some cookies and went on our way to give a nice little Halloween treat!