Halloween craft ideas for children

What simple ideas can I use for Halloween crafting with children?

Spooky window decorations:

Draw various Halloween motifs on black, white or orange construction paper, for example ghosts, spiders, bats, witch's brooms or a pumpkin. Your child can cut out the motifs, punch holes and attach them with a thread to a gnarled branch or a ring cut from cardboard – and the Halloween mobile is ready! Alternatively, you can also glue the Halloween motifs onto paper plates painted in bright colors and hang them up.

Ghost garlands:

Garlands are typical party decorations, but they also look great in the entrance area, for example when you hand out treats to little Halloween candy collectors. For this you can either print, cut out and stick Halloween motifs onto a ribbon to make a garland, or shape little ghosts. To do this, place a paper ball on roundly cut pieces of tissue paper, pull the paper up all around and tie it with a thread. The ball is the ghost's head, the protruding tissue paper the body. These ghosts are strung on a cord to form a garland.

Halloween masks:

If you take some time to prepare, you can create imaginative Halloween masks from papier-mâché or plaster bandages. Faster and easier are pre-printed cardboard masks that your child can cut out, paint and glue together.

Halloween invitation cards:

If your child celebrates Halloween with their friends, authentic invitation cards are of course part of it. With a few simple steps you can make great Make your own Halloween invitations, for example with bat or pumpkin shapes cut from construction paper and written on. A bit more elaborate is a mini paper lantern with a spooky face on it. Inside you can hide a note with the invitation details. If you like it sweet, bake small pumpkin or skull cookies in advance, decorate them with icing and distribute each cookie with a small invitation card in a clear bag.

Crazy toilet roll monsters:

It's worth saving empty toilet paper or kitchen roll tubes — because you can make truly unique monsters and characters for Halloween from them! Your child's imagination really knows no bounds here. The empty tubes can be decorated as desired with colorful construction paper or painted. Decorate the monsters with felt-tip pens, attach colorful pipe cleaners for a wild hairstyle, or stick on lots of googly eyes so the creature can watch everything.

Spooky lights:

Candles, tealights or fairy lights create the right atmosphere for Halloween in your home. And with a few simple steps you can give the light sources a spooky touch — for example when making mummy lights. For this, old mason jars are wrapped with gauze bandages and given two googly eyes. Now put a tealight into the jar and the lighting is ready.

Or how about colorful ghost lights?

For this you need plastic cups in different colors and waterproof markers in several thicknesses. Place the cups so that the opening is on the table and the bottom faces up. Now you can freely draw spooky grimaces and faces on the cups. At the end, place an electronic tealight under the cup and the ghosts start to glow.

Crafting materials – what you need for Halloween crafting fun

Before the big Halloween crafting session with your child begins, you of course need the appropriate craft materials. In most cases you probably already have many of them at home – after all, children love to craft and get creative. In addition, in autumn you can find great natural materials outdoors that are suitable for Halloween crafting, such as chestnuts or pine cones.

Once you've chosen a specific craft idea, gather the necessary materials for it conveniently. The general rule is: the more craft materials, the better — because the more elaborate and unique your Halloween creations will be! At HABA you will find plenty of craft supplies and accessories for Halloween crafting with your child.

Here is an overview of the most important crafting materials:

Construction paper in various colors
Scissors
Ruler
Craft glue
Adhesive tape
Hole punch
Stapler
Pencils, colored pencils, felt-tip pens and wax crayons
Pencil sharpener
Colored wool or yarn
Paintbrushes
Acrylic and watercolor paints
Stamps and stamp pads
Decorative gems, googly eyes, etc.

Essential for Halloween crafting with children: carve your own jack-o'-lantern

In the days around Halloween you see them everywhere in house entrances, on fence posts and steps: carved pumpkin lanterns whose spooky faces spread their dim, orange-red light. The pumpkins are also great as table decorations – and carving pumpkins is a lot of fun. With a few tips and some help from an adult, children can design their very own scary face.

Tip: Save the pumpkin flesh to make something tasty for the Halloween party. Especially popular Halloween recipes include pumpkin soup, pumpkin muffins, sweet pumpkin bread or pumpkin cake.

Crafting flying ghosts for Halloween

Halloween Basteln | Gespenster-Pappbecher

Boo! Spooky ghosts should of course not be missing from your home at Halloween. The ghosts are scariest when they dangle from the ceiling as decorations and thus seem to float in the air. We'll explain how you can easily craft the ghosts together with your children for Halloween.

You need:

White paper cups
White construction paper
White crepe paper
String for hanging
Pencil
Black felt-tip pen, alternatively googly eyes
Adhesive tape
Glue

Here's how:

First prepare the paper cup so that you can hang it up later. To do this, carefully pierce a hole in the center of the cup bottom with the tip of the scissors or pencil.
Cut a piece of string for hanging. The length depends on where you hang the ghost and how far it should dangle. Now thread the string through the hole in the cup bottom. Tie a knot in the end inside the cup so that the string can no longer slip through the hole.
Take the white construction paper and draw two small arms for the ghost with the pencil. Then cut them out carefully. To attach the arms, cut small slits with the scissors on two opposite sides of the cup. Now insert the arms into the cup. If they don't hold by themselves, you can secure them inside the cup with a little adhesive tape.
For the ghost's spooky garment, cut a two-centimeter wide strip from the rolled-up white crepe paper. Unroll this strip and cut it into about six shorter strips.
Attach the resulting strips to the inside rim of the cup with a little glue. If you now turn the cup over, the strips hang down eerily like a garment.
Give the ghost two big eyes with a felt-tip pen – alternatively, you can stick two funny googly eyes on it.
Now the ghosts can be hung up. For example, tie them to a ceiling lamp or hang them on a nail in the wall. The ghosts look especially spooky when the crepe paper strips move and flutter in a light breeze.