Bootiful Hands and Freaky Pumpkins - Simple Halloween Crafts

Freaky Pumpkin Craft

Since she had slept in this morning and we had no plans for the evening, I decided to try and skip nap to get her to bed on time so we could try and get her sleep schedule back on track. (If we drive in the afternoon/evening after skipping nap, she WILL fall asleep, and ruin everything.) 

She had seen some decorations on a neighbor's house yesterday and thought that they must be having a party, so I told her we could decorate our house for Halloween too. I found some neat ideas and decided to see what she was in the mood for. 

I had my own idea to just cut out pumpkins and features (out of our new construction paper) and let her make her own Jack-O-Lantern faces, so we did that first. I made some square and round eyes (with little square pupils cut out the sides) and triangles (for noses or eyes) and a toothy mouth. 

She glued all the pieces onto one 'pumpkin.' She used the round eyes as cheeks (we had done a face craft from our Preschool-In-A-Box that had cheeks) so I hastily cut out some cheeky circles for her to use instead, but she just added them onto her pumpkin monster. She put the mouth on upside-down and said it was hair, so I cut out a jaggety swath she could use as hair, but she used it as a mouth!

Our glue stick was from the Dollar Tree, but it had the Scholastic logo on it, so I thought I could trust it. It was crap. She got very frustrated that the pieces wouldn't stay on, and often stuck more to her fingers and came back up after they were glued down. Her face(s) got more sloppy and random as she re-applied bits.

Bootiful Hands

We took a breather after she threw a little fit (she was tired and the glue was weaksauce) until she was ready to make Bootiful Hand Ghosts (my name for them.) We traced her hands onto white construction paper, I cut them out, and then she drew on faces.

She was thrilled to be using Mommy's pen (my Sharpie) since I couldn't find her markers, and sort of forgot about the whole face plan, and went to town coloring. While I was taking the pic, the Sharpie went off the paper and made a mark on the table. GAK! She was being careful, and was taking my rules seriously (paper only. No skin or clothes. Normally our rule for pens and paint and stamps are 'paper or skin only' but I didn't want Sharpie all over her!) But I hadn't even thought about her basic lack of coordination, and that it might cause the pen to go off the paper. So we laid down newspaper after, and all went well.

She was so pleased with her hands, she kept trying to use my ballpoint pens to trace them again later, when I was updating my calendar planner.
[I color-code for events with different groups or other stuff like gym class, school, family stuff or appointments. Red for non-club stuff, like classes and family plans; black for important stuff like doctor appointments; green, turquoise, pink, purple and blue for my different mom groups; and orange for preschool stuff. I use 2 rings (the kind that snap open and closed) to keep a pen pouch attached to the spiral binding on my calendar planner, and keep all the pens inside. I also keep membership cards, like to the children's museum and zoo, as well as activity coupons or punch cards in there, so I always have them in case we decide to go to the inflatable bouncy place, or open gym somewhere, or whatever, at the last minute, so I don't have to go back home for them, but I don't have to have my pockets full of them all the time either. The reason I use different colors for each mommy group is that sometimes there are multiple events at the same time, and if I don't really have a preference, I might decide based on which group I know better. I know my MOMS the best (and Z knows and is becoming more comfortable around those kids,) so I'll usually opt to do stuff with them first, for example. But the colors also help for me to go in and change my RSVP at the last minute without having to go to 5 different places to see who it's with.]