Teachers, or Moms...

I am a Kindergarten teacher, and I'm looking for a Halloween craft to do with my class tomorrow. The past few years I've done something from Oriental Trading, but this year I was looking to go with something more kid created. Any ideas?

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

The kindergarten and my fourth graders paired up and we borrowed the nurses skeleton and they drew the skeleton (not much detail) and then glued q-tips as the bones. It was really cute! Another thing I did was take lollipops and wrap them with a tissue and tie string around the neck and then draw a ghost face on it.

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

How about Jack 0'Lanterns...
Give them pumpkin tracers (all different sizes), and they can cut out eyes and put gold glitter around eyes nose and mouth to make it look like it is glowing...My first graders love this!

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

I like taking a big pumpkin cutout -- having the kids cut out their own shapes for the jackolantern face (or you can use buttons, pre-cut foam shapes, etc.) and then cutting black strips with black construction paper, and have small pumpkins traced also.

They use the big pumpkin as the body -- make "accordians" with the black strips....and use the small pumpkins as feet and hands.

We call him Mr. Pumpkin Head in my class.

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

What about making pumpkin masks? You can have them cut out the pumpkin, draw the face or cut out shapes and glue them on, then attach a tongue depressor so they can hold it up to their faces as a mask.

Or, you can have pumpkin centers, have one center doing the masks, then maybe have another center where they can decorate cookies with orange icing and sprinkles, etc....

Also, you could make a class jack-o-lantern. You could have one big pumpkin, then make them vote on what he should look like. Example:

You: What kind of eyes should our pumpkin have?
The kids will give you suggestions, then you can make them vote on each suggestion to come up with a jack-o-lantern.

HTH

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

i used to teach kindergarten art... my halloween project was this:

i gave them each a white piece of paper and a white crayon... i had them draw designs.... they were all confused because you cant see the white crayon on the white paper, but i told them to trust me... i was goign to show them a magic trick...

then i gave them blue and purple water colors... we then water colored over the paper... the white crayon acts as a resist, and now all their lines show up!

I usually already have pre-cut pumpkin frames in different shapes and sizes... i take orange paper, trace a pumpkin, then cut it out... you can save the pumpkin for another craft, but make sure you save the frame... (this is something that i did for them and had already prepared)

we then take the pumpkin frames and glue it on the edges of the white paper so there is now a purple/blue water color pumpkin showing... (i hope this makes sense)

i then give them black scrap paper and they cut out parts for a jack-o-lantern face...

these always came out great! and the kids loved them especially because of the magic crayon trick!

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

Thanks so much girls. I knew I could count on you :) I'm also thinking of making paper bag pumpkins. They're going to stuff them with newspaper and twist off the top for the stem and paint them. I like the centers idea though :)

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

I was going to say paper bag pumpkins also. If you have a pumpkin at home, you can bring it in and do circumference estmation. We would use a string and have kids estimate how much string it would take to go around the pumpkin. We'd cut the string and then sort it into: too long, too short, or just right.
We'd also make pumpkin faces out of orange construction paper and different shapes for the faces.We'd then also make them into accordian PumpkinPeople.
We also did shape witches. They were a large triangle for the body, circle face, triangle hat, reactangle legs, arms and broomstick and smaller rectangle feet. They always came out so cute. HTH

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

Another good idea is having them paint a cut out of a pumpkin orange. After it dries, have them glue shells onto the pumpkin. Then they can paint the shells orange. It looks really cute when done.

Re: Teachers, or Moms...

When I taught K, I did this project with them:

Take an orange piece of construction paper. Paint the kid's feet white with tempera paint, then have them stand on the paper so there are 2 white foot prints. Turn them upside down, and they become "ghosts" - when dry, you can make ghost eyes with a sharpie. Then under it, I wrote "Trick or treat! See my feet? This is what I'd like to eat:" and had them write the name of their favorite Halloween candy.

Very messy, a little gross with the feet, but it turned out really cute.