halloween & christmas crafts for children

Nice and easy paper plates and some string :) Let her draw either halloween or xmas character faces on the bottom of the paper plate, cut out the eyes/nose/mouth as necessary and then use the string to make them into masks. Make one for each of the family and then theres the amusement of how fun/scary 'X' looks wearing the mask she's made. Paper or cardboard spiders. Trace the childs hand on board/paper and cut both out place together at the wrist edges and then attach either a circle of board/paper or an old unwated cd (find a store that gives away free cd's such as internet trials ... they come in handy for lots of cheap craft ideas). The fingers of the hand cutouts make up the legs and the central piece is the body. Either string or elastic can be attached. Use unwanted cd as above to make a spooky clock. Clock mechanisms and hands are quite cheap from craft stores and can be fixed onto the back of old cd's, which can then be decorated by the child. Rather than buying the mechs and hands you could just get the child to decorate it to show midnight. Ah to be young and care-free again hehe Hope ya have a great time.

Some of the easiest crafts are doing cutting and pasting with construction paper. If you are able to, I suggest going to a local department store (such as Walmart), and getting a pad of construction paper. I've seen "Crayola" paper packages, and they come with all sorts of colours. With the coloured paper, you can pull out most of the black, white and orange sheets and cut out bats, pumpkins and ghosts. Then use the coloured scraps to cut out faces for the characters you've just made. If you have some string, you can punch holes in the top of them and make a mobile with straws or on a hanger. Or just tape them up on some mirrors or doors in your home for decorations. Easy and fun. :) A fun craft I did with my sons last year (they were 6, 6, and 8 at the time), was chalk drawings on black construction paper. I had bought a package of hallowe'en theme foam cut outs from walmart or a dollar store, and they glued them onto the black (or blue) paper. Then they drew a picture around it with chalk.

Last week my granddaughter and DIL came over and I sent her out to home depot and we got some pourous tiles..large ones and she did her hand print on them and they will be gifts to her other grandmothers to use in their gardens or flower beds as stepping stones( the ones she did for me and her mama....we put our larger hand down first and her smaller one over our handprint).....I also got her some clear christmas ornaments...at JoAnns and they have them at Michaels too....you take the top off and pour different colors of paint (folk art paint will do..it's cheap too) and then spin the ornament around mixing the colors....they are beautiful when done! My granddaughter is three and she did them with my other 8 year old granddaughter last spring....They are so pretty we are selling them at my next craft sale.