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In our quest to create the perfect Halloween for our children, we often neglect the fact that what we are doing is for our children and we leave them out of the equation completely. Kids love Halloween and all of the traditions that come with it.
You can see making Halloween decorations for kids with your kids as a great way of getting them away from their mobile phones and console games and involving them in something more hands-on and creative. When kids get involved, things may not always turn out perfect, or the way you wanted them to, but at the end of the day making the decorations and putting them out should be about the time spent together as a family and getting your kids involved and not about the aesthetics and the showmanship of it.
Things You May Need
Before you jump in head over heels, you may want to sit down and make a shopping list of all the things you will need to make the decorations such as these wall stickers UK.
Save By Recycling
Not only will you save the environment, but you will also save yourself a ton of cash and clear up some space in your home by using recyclable items to make your decorations from. Look around your home and see if any of the things you may need aren’t maybe lying around. Old broken tennis balls or discarded pieces of foil will do just fine. You may want to check your child’s room for any broken toys that you can use. Anything can be transformed into a ghost, ghoul or monster with a little bit of imagination and some creativity.
You can save up old egg boxes and cereal boxes as well as wrapping paper through the year to use for the decorations. You can even utilize simple home decor like vintage runner rugs in order to uplift the looks of your space.
Household Items
Even though some items are not fit for recycling, they can still be used and make your decorations so much more fun and exciting as well as cost-effective.
These items include, but are not limited to:
- Paper plates
- Drinking straws
- Pipe cleaners
- Scrap paper
- Paper or Plastic shopping bags
- Aluminum Foil
- Paper cups
- Discarded Plastic cool drink bottles
- And so much more
Tools Of The Trade
When you have all of the items you need to make your projects, then you will need to gather all of the tools you may need such as scissors, paper, glue, knives, paper punches and anything else you may need to put your project together.
Getting Creative
Because kids have such active imaginations, no matter what their ages, they are a great source of inspiration then doing crafts such as these. They may not have the experience and knowledge of how to execute their ideas yes so this would be where you will come in.
Ask your children to come up with ideas on what you will be making.
Pick A Theme
Kids are not always all that great in this department as they tend to have more random thoughts, but you can ask their input on coming up with some ideas. Let everyone in the family come up with some ideas on what the theme of your decorations and write them all down. After that, you can either have a lucky draw, and let fate decide on your theme or you can go about it more democratically by letting everyone casting votes about what the theme will be for your Halloween this year. In this way you will avoid arguments and make the process a lot simpler.
Organize Your Decorations
As soon as you know in which direction your decorations are heading, you can start to get together a few ideas on what you will be making. Setting up a bouncy castle hire in your backyard is a great idea if you want to keep the kids entertained. Remember to ask for everyone’s input. Write them all down and decide together which materials you will be using to make these decorations.
Research
If you are not experienced in making your own crafts then you may want to take the time to research what you are getting into.
Potential Ideas For Decorations That Your Kids May Like
Spiders
Spiders can be bought but they can be fun to make as well. You can use anything from florist foam balls to polystyrene balls to make the body. To add a bit of squeamish fun to your spider you can even make a jelly mould for the body. For the legs, some bendable drinking straws will help to add a more indestructible twist. You could also use wooden skewers, cut to size, and tape them together at the bends. You could them paste funny faces onto the body or you could give our spiders scary faces too.
Party Hats
What could a party possibly be without party hats? Making Halloween party hats can be a lot of fun as well. Paper plates or paper bowls make a good base. You can then use strings, sticks and pipes to add your festive items such as bugs or spiders or ghosts by either sticking them onto the hat or suspending them off the hat with string. Paint is always an effective and fun way of decorating any item.
Spooky Shadows
Making shadows on the walls can be made easy when you have the right printer and size paper. You may have to take your design to a printing shop to have it printed to the right size. Print out your design on paper and then have it blown up to the desired size on black paper. You can then stick it up against the wall or walls. These shadows can be anything from trees to bats to the shadows of your family members. You can then paste witches hats or funny noses or funny faces onto these shadows to make them more fun and interactive.
What’s In The Bag?
Trick or treating is so much more fun if your bag matches the occasion. You could tie the bags in with the theme of your home or party. Make your Halloween items and decorations all tie in with the same theme. You can use potato stamps, stencils, stickers or even paint to decorate your trick or treat loot bag.
Doing It The Shakespeare Way
A lot of fun can be had with a simple cast iron pot. If you want to become a lot more technical about it, you could rig up an electric light bulb inside the pot and then put colored paper or plastic sheets on top of the light to give the pot an eerie glow. To make your project a little more sinister you could put fill it up with jelly to make it look like slime and you could even turn this once dreary black pot into a game by hiding items such as small toys, coins or even sweets inside the jelly and letting the kids fish them out.
Ghastly Greetings
Greet your guests by forming a welcoming party of lamps to form a pathway to your front door. You can use old tin cans and punch holes in them. You can also cover them with paper on the outside and turn them into ghosts or Frankenstein’s monsters by putting faces on them. Just make sure that the candle’s flame will not make contact with the paper if you are using it as this may cause a bigger fire. Always be present if your children are working with or anywhere near anything concerning flames or fire.
Pumpkin Party
Halloween will never be the same if the pumpkins are not included in the festivities. You can make them funny by drawing or painting funny faces on the pumpkins or you can make them look pretty by sticking little bats or flowers onto them. With all of these options, your kids can help you to decorate them. The only thing they won’t be able to help with is any cutting, should you want to make a jack-o-lantern. You can either put a single pumpkin outside your door, or you can make a whole family of pumpkins.
Monster Jars
Containers that hold candy can be decorated to look like your favorite type of monster. You can even make your own candy dispenser by placing a bowl on top of a cardboard or plastic tube and decorate it to look like a ghost or a monster.
Witch Place Markers
Paper cups turned upside down can be painted black and can be turned into a witch by adding arms and legs to the cup and by fixing a ball on top. You can now add hair, a face and a paper hat. The guest’s name can then be added on the stomach of the witch. If witches do not fit in with your party’s theme you can use the same principle to make whichever creature or character that will fit in with your theme.
Documenting the Event
Why not let your kids make memories of Halloween that they can take well into their adulthood. You can make them a special Halloween journal with places to write stories they are told or have read, to write in their own experiences and then make spaces for them to put photos or draw pictures of their experiences. One day when they are grown and they have their own children, they can pass this journal or the idea of the journal onto their children. Just remember to make one for each child and to let them personalize it so that there is no fighting over who has which book.
Flying Bats
You can have bats flying around your home for Halloween by making a bat mobile. This can be done with a coat hanger and some string or you could make it a bit more elaborate by stringing gut across the ceiling of your home at different angles to let the bats fly along the trail you created for them. This takes a bit or forethought about where the bats will go to and laying the gut out properly so that they do not get caught or entangled. A good old-fashioned mobile at the entrance will be enough of a surprise to anyone entering and not suspecting its presence.
Skeletons In The Closets
A skeleton may not be the easiest thing to draw or to make but it is not at all impossible. Print out a picture of a skeleton and blow up the individual bones and joints so that they are all the same proportion and then paste them onto cardboard or trace it onto cardboard and cut them out. You can then assemble it in a closet by stringing the parts together. To add a really scary twist you can have the kids paint the skeleton with glow in the dark paint or you can let them paste glow in the dark stickers on the skeleton and then string it up in a closet or against a door. Using string to put the bones together gives the skeleton a sense of flexibility and you can position your skeleton the way you want it and make it strike a pose.
Lighting The Way
Blowing up balloons and covering them loosely with white cloth will make them look like ghosts. Tie them down and put a battery operated tea light candle underneath them to give them an eerie glow.
Finger Puppets
Let your kids help you to make characters in the form of finger puppets. They can then let their creativity flow and write a story including the characters they made and they can then make turns to put on a puppet show.
The Most Important Thing To Remember
As much as you would like things to go according to plan, you need to let your kids get involved. Halloween parties which include kids should be for the kids. What is the use in making decorations for a kid-friendly Halloween party if the kids are not allowed to pitch in or even touch the decorations? The more interactive your decorations are the better the children will enjoy the party. Let them be kids and get messy and indulge and enjoy themselves. Halloween only comes around once a year.