Jack O'lantern Suncatcher

Still looking for some quick and easy Halloween projects? This Jack O'lantern Suncatcher is not too messy and is quick to put together.

Little Brother and I enjoyed making it recently and we love the Halloween color it adds to our window!

Cork Print Spiders

Last year we were given a very large bag of corks, and it's been fun to think of different ways to use them. In honor of Halloween, and because we've enjoyed other spider projects this fall, we decided to try cork print spiders.

This also proved to be another great, after school project for Big Brother one weekday. 

Ghost Mud

Halloween is almost here, but we're still having some fun with different Halloween play ideas. Over the weekend we decided to get a little creative with some sensory play and experiment with a different take on cloud dough, which we're calling Ghost Mud.

Ghost Mud Sensory Play

We've made what is often called cloud dough in the past (you can see one example as Snow Dough here) which is made using flour and baby oil. We've also enjoyed making oobleck (corn starch and water) so we decided to try and mix up the two recipes by trying corn starch and baby oil together. 

Witchy Playdough Play

We had so much fun with our Room on the Broom post that we decided to continue our witchy themed fun. We found a pack of "witch fingers" while doing some shopping. Big Brother and I instantly got excited about the idea of some witch themed playdough play.

Witchy Playdough Play

To begin with I made a batch of basic cooked playdough. I dyed the playdough a bright green color by mixing in green and yellow food coloring. After cooking I kneaded in about 1/4 cup of green glitter for a little extra fun. 

Cork Bats

The other day we were headed to a play date with two good friends who also love to craft and we wanted to bring something fun to do. We quickly put together this fun cork bat craft, which is perfect for October and was easy to assemble.

The kids (ages 4, 5, and 7) were able to do almost all of the work themselves, which made them all feel really proud of their creations.  

Halloween Character Votives

Earlier in the summer we had a lot of fun using recycled baby jars to create Under the Sea Votive Holders. Now that it's a new season, it was time to create a new set with a new theme: halloween!

These votive holders are really so easy to make, and can turn out really colorful and fun. We added a new lighting source for this set: finger lights from the dollar store. The lights are very bright and make the candle holders really glow. Plus they are easy for Big Brother to turn on and off  by himself. 

Halloween Sticky Collage

It's October, which means it's that time of year where our family is pretty excited to be getting ready for Halloween! It's definitely a top family holiday. 

Halloween Sticky Collage

This year we were excited to participate in the Halloween Read + Play blog hop. Over 25 bloggers each picked a favorite halloween book and have paired it with a fun activity or project, there are some great ideas in this series!

For our project we chose the book Pumpkin Eye by Denise Fleming. The story is filled with fabulous rhymes, a catchy rhythm, and helps the reader imagine they're on the street trick-or-treating for the evening. 

After we read the book, we created our own halloween street using the "sticky collage" approach. We call it a sticky collage because the base is contact paper, which allows little hands to stick the items to the collage without needing glue. We've enjoyed several other types of sticky collage before. 

Halloween Sensory Bin

We're eagerly looking forward to Halloween tomorrow, it's one of our favorite holidays. Earlier this week we set up this fun Halloween sensory bin to tide over our excitement until the actual holiday.

Pumpkin Plate Shaker

This was another quick, fun pumpkin project we completed this week. To make it I gathered a few things we had around the house: paper plates, black construction paper, dried beans, orange paint, glue, and curling ribbon.

First, Big Brother painted the back side of the plates orange. We let them dry overnight.

The next afternoon I cut some black construction paper into triangle pieces and a jack-o-lantern mouth piece and Big Brother glued them onto the plate.

We taped the curling ribbon to the inside of one of the plates. We then filled the plate with a handful of dried beans. Ideally it would have been better to use dried pumpkin seeds as we talked about what was inside a real pumpkin, but we didn't have any on hand. 

Afterwards we stapled the two plates together with the orange sides out. Big Brother had a lot of fun making noise with it, shaking it, and banging it like a tambourine. These would be especially fun to use at a Halloween parade! 

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