Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Halloween Bats

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After reading the book Bats by Gail Gibbons, we just couldn’t get enough of bats.

So, we decided to make our own version of the cardboard tube bat.

I had originally planned to hang these for a Halloween decoration, but the girls decided to use them as toys instead. They were tons of fun to play with!

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Supplies Needed:

Cardboard tube, cut in half
Black paint
Black construction paper
Glue
Googly eyes
White crayon
Hole punch
Yarn or string

To prep the project, I drew simple bats wings on our black construction paper.

I made the wings all one piece because you will attach your body to the middle. If you use white crayon, it is both easy to see and cut.

I also drew two small triangles for our ears.

The girls each took half of a cardboard tube and painted it black.

While they were waiting for the paint to dry, they cut out their wings and ears.

Once the paint was (almost) dry, we glued our cardboard tube to the middle of our wings.

Next we glued our ears to the top of our tubes.

The girls added googly eyes and drew a mouth and nose with the white crayon.

Once our bats were complete, we punched two holes on the top of each side of our wings.

To finish our bats, we ran a piece of yarn through both holes and tied it at the top.

It’s perfect for hanging… or trailing along behind as you run through the house.

We had tons of fun making and learning about bats.

We learned some fun facts. Did you know that bats have thumbs? Me neither!

We have a new favorite animal.

And, we now have new toys that we made ourselves.

10 Halloween Activities for Kids

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Over the past couple of years, we’ve had lots of fun doing Halloween projects. I’ve rounded up 10 of my favorites from the archives and put them all in one place for you.

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Make some easy finger puppets to go along with the book Five Little Pumpkins

Make collages from magazine pages, and then turn them into these fun owls.

Make some black Halloween cats. They’re easy and fun to make!

These wiggly-armed monsters are another fun project to make from recycled paper tubes.

Turn into spooky spiders with these fun googly-eyed spider masks.

This Halloween word search is great for a bit of quiet time. Pop over for the free printable!

Get the whole family involved and tell spooky stories with shadow puppets.

It takes only one paper plate to make these cool candy corn wreaths.

Make the cutest paper-roll mummies! The googly eyes turn the cute factor up a few notches.

Set up a mini card-making factory and use a simple printmaking technique to make your cards.

What project are you going to add to your must-do list?

Halloween Printmaking

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Disclosure: CraftProjectIdeas.com provided some the supplies for this project. All ideas are our own. There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

We love to send homemade cards.

We send them at birthdays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

This year we decided to make our own homemade Halloween cards.

To do so, we set up our own mini card-making factory by making our own stamps.

Supplies Needed:

Heavy cardboard (from a shipping box)
Craft foam
Glue
Orange paint
Glitter
Card stock cut to size

Before we could make our cards, we had to make our stamps.

We drew simple pumpkins on our craft foam and cut them out.

We then cut the pumpkins into thirds.

We glued our foam down onto our cardboard leaving a small space in between each section of pumpkin.

While the glue dried, we mixed our glitter into the paint.

Use as much or as little glitter as you like.

By mixing the glitter into the paint, you can considerably reduce the glitter messiness.

If you don’t want to use glitter, you can do this project without it.

Once our paint was mixed, we were ready to start printing.

Paint each section of foam with your orange paint.

Give it an even coating, but not too thin. Try to avoid clumps if you can.

Turn your stamp over and press it onto the front of your card.

Hold it down firmly for 10 seconds and try not to wiggle it. Then, pull it straight up.

It’s a simple and satisfying process that my 6- and 4-year old were able to achieve without any difficulty.

Once the paint was dry, the girls took black markers and wrote Happy Halloween on the front of each.

They’re so excited to send these out in the mail! Do you ever make your own cards?

For more printing making fun, please see Cityscape Printmaking. We used a similar method with fun results.

Sight Word Islands

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As parents, we all want to help our kids be successful in school.

My daughters’ teachers will often let us know some of the things we can work on at home to complement the things they are learning in school.

If you have a child learning to read, one big thing you can do to help is to practice sight words at home.

Sight words are integral when learning to read. These are the words that are found in just about everything you read. They are best learned by memorization, since many cannot be sounded out.

Of course, no one actually wants to sit and memorize words, especially not your average 5 or 6 year old.

So, why not turn it into a game?

Since my girls love playing driveway games, I thought I’d bring some of our sight word review outside.

We got out the sidewalk chalk and took over the driveway with a game of Sight Word Islands.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

To set up the game: 

In the center of our driveway, I drew a large star with a circle around it. This was the island we were trying to reach.

I then wrote sight words coming out from the star in all directions. Each word had a circle around it. These were our islands.

I used both words that my first grader needs to work on as well as words that she is already quite comfortable reading.

I then added three different starting points on the outer edges.

To play the game: 

Each girl stood on one of the start islands. Their goal was to jump from island to island all the way to the star.

But, in order to jump onto an island, you had to say the word out loud.

The shortest way to the star wasn’t always the easiest way!

My preschooler played along with us and took a lot of help from both Mom and big sister.

She has not reached the level of sight words yet, so we gave her a pass on actually knowing the words. Instead, she just had lots of fun jumping!

I love to turn learning into a game. Plus, anything that involves gross motor skills such as running and jumping is a hit with just about any child. Movement can go a long way in helping your child learn and remember. This post at Moving Smart explains why movement is so important. So, get moving and get learning!

What are some creative ways you’ve used for teaching sight words?

Practice sight words on the driveway by playing Sight Words Islands. It's a fun way to learn and move at the same time.
 

You May Also Like One of These Sight Word Activities:

DIY Sight Word Memory Game

Sight Word Tallies

Sight Word Pick and Spell

Frog Hop Sight Word Game at Mom Inspired Life

Sight Word Bracelets at Kitchen Floor Crafts

Painting with Carrots

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When we harvested our carrots this year, I discovered exactly why I should have thinned them out.

We had several carrots that were very, very tiny because they had no room to grow. (Note to self: thin the carrots next year!)

I thought it would be fun to get a little creative with them.

So, I pulled a few that were on their way to the compost bin and let Miss Preschool have a little fun painting.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

I left the carrots whole and told her she could use them as paint bushes.

We got out a few colors of paint and paper and she started painting.

She painted, stamped, smeared, and enjoyed spreading the carrots around in the paint.

We even had one carrot that never turned orange. Since that one was bigger, I cut it in two and Miss Preschool used that one to stamp circles on her paper.

We had tons of fun with this open-ended art project. If ever the opportunity presents itself, do a little painting with non-traditional brushes.

Here are some more fun examples: 

Teach Preschool painted with dominoes
Mess for Less painted with shredded paper
No Time for Flashcards painted with various items from the recycle bin

What sort of non-traditional paint brush do your kids enjoy using?