With a three-day weekend ahead, we wanted to share a few craft ideas families can create at home. Although we wish we could be spending this weekend at camp, we thought these projects would bring the camp magic to your home.
1. Make leaf people
- Gather some fall leaves, acorns, small twigs, paper and glue.
- Set the paper down first and place the leaves on top of the paper.
- Put glue on the leaves where you would like to place acorns to make eyes and a mouth.
- Glue sticks in a body position with two arms and two legs.
2. Hand Print Acorns
- You will need a paintbrush, brown and white washable paint, and paper.
- Start by mixing white and brown paint together to make a light brown/tan color. Let your kids paint their own hand and stamp it on a piece of paper twice.
- Take the paintbrush and make the acorn’s brown top with the regular brown color.
3. Paper Plate Apple:
- You will need a white paper plate, a piece of green construction paper, red finger-paint, black finger-paint, green finger-paint, a black pipe cleaner, scissors (for parent’s use), and glue.
- Using the scissors, cut 2 “c” shapes out of the sides of the paper place. You’ll then have an apple core like shape.
- Dipping little fingertips into the red finger-paint, paint the outer circular edges of the paper plate (NOT where we cut out the “c”) red. Wipe off the excess paint from their fingers.
- Dip one finger into black finger-paint. “Dot” the fingertip into the center of the plate to create apple seeds. Wipe off excess paint.
- Get out the green construction paper. Dip the palm of the hand into green finger-paint. Press hand down onto the construction paper to create green leaves. Cut out the hand into a leaf shape. Be sure to clean off those little hands!
4. Halloween feet/hands
- This craft can be done in a variety of ways!
- (Ghosts) You will need orange construction paper and white paint.
- Paint both of your child’s feet white and have them stand on the construction paper.
- Add black accents with either a pen or paintbrush once the paint has dried.
- (Frankenstein) You will need white construction paper with green and black paint.
- Paint the palm of the hand green and the four fingers black and press onto the construction paper.
- Once the paint dries, add the facial accents.
- (Candy Corn) You will need black construction paper with yellow, orange and white paint.
- Paint your child’s heel white, middle part of the foot orange, and top of the foot and toes yellow.
- Have them stand on the construction paper.
- (Witches) You will need white construction paper and any other colored paints.
- Paint your child’s feet any color. Have them stand on the construction paper.
- Once the paint dries, add a face, a witch hat, two arms for each foot, and a broom!
5. Paper Bag Monster Puppets
- You will need paper lunch bags, acrylic paint (colors of your choice), colored cardstock or construction paper, scissors (for parental use), markers, circle punches, glue.
- Paint the front and bottom of your paper bag with the color of your choice. Let it dry completely.
- Use your colored cardstock paper, construction paper, scissors, circle punches and markers to design a unique monster.
- Let your creativity take over! Think eyeballs, teeth, fun patterns, pointy ears and horns.
- The extra fun part comes after you are finished making your monsters and can watch your kids put on a puppet show.
6. Toilet Paper Roll Mummies
- You will need finished toilet paper rolls, black paint, paintbrush, gauze, googly eyes, & glue.
- Paint the toilet paper rolls black. Let them dry for a few hours.
- Glue googly eyes near the top of the tube. If using school glue, give the glue a bit of time to dry before wrapping with the gauze.
- Wrap the toilet paper tubes with strips of gauze, gluing occasionally along the length of the strip to secure it in place.
7. Popsicle Stick Scarecrow Magnet
- You will need popsicle sticks, craft paint (orange, white, black & red), cardstock/cardboard, raffia (if you don’t have raffia, be creative! – string, hemp, ribbon, etc.), glue, magnets.
- Use Elmer’s glue to glue 7 craft sticks together to your cardstock or cardboard.
- Glue one craft stick on a slight diagonal and horizontally across the 7 already glued craft sticks.
- Glue a few strands of the raffia onto the horizontal craft stick for the scarecrow’s hair.
- Once dried, you can paint the scarecrow – from the horizontal craft stick and up, paint yellow. Below the horizontal craft stick, paint white.
- Once the paint dries you can add two eyes, a triangle shaped nose, and a mouth.
- Attach magnets to the back of your scarecrow .
8. Spider hat/headband
- You will need black construction paper, scissors (for parental use), googly eyes, glue & tape.
- To begin, cut long strips of paper to fit each child’s head. (if you don’t have strips long enough you can glue two pieces together).
- Cut long thin strips of paper for each child to have eight. Fold each paper into little squares – fold and flip, fold and flip. (you may want to mark boxes on the strips about an inch long so that your child knows where to fold and flip.
- Lay down the headband/hat piece (leave a blank space in the middle so it does not block your eyes when it is on). Add four dots of glue on the bottom of one side and four dots of glue on the bottom of the other side. Attach all eight legs.
- Fold the top half of the headband over and seal it with glue (covering where you just glued the legs). This helps the legs stay attached and increases the spider hat durability a bit.
- Once dried, flip over the headbands and glue on the googly eyes.
- Once everything dries, staple the headband together and put them on your head!
