Family Activities: Making Halloween Cards

Children and toddlers absolutely love anything that involves any arts and crafts and for younger ones, like my daughter Bridget who has just turned two, it's an excellent way of helping them tune their fine motor skills - not to mention keeping them entertained for a while; perfect during half term if your kids are now climbing the walls. It’s just a great family activity.

With Halloween coming up on Monday, I spent some time with Bridget making spooky cards for all the family using a bunch of different items and encouraging her to get messy and have some fun.

We recently bought the Step2 Flip & Doodle Desk for Bridget's birthday, which is a desk with easel and drawers and compartments for all different arts and crafts and it has been such a great investment. We've already had hours of fun with it and I know come the colder, winter months when I'm very heavily pregnant or at home with the new baby, this is going to be invaluable.

Some simple Halloween crafting needn't be an expensive ask either, the only thing we bought were some spooky stickers from a pound shop - everything else we had in supply; and we even used an apple to help us print some paint-pumpkins. 

Homemade Halloween Cards

Halloween Crafting

Things you might need:

· Orange tissue paper

· Coloured card

· PVA Glue

· Some googly eyes

· Pipe cleaners

· Pompoms

· An apple

· Some yellow and red paint (or orange if you have some)

· Sticky backed letters

· Spooky Halloween stickers (can pick up in pound shops, supermarkets or Hobbycraft)


We made eight cards - simply folding 8 pieces of coloured card in half - plus a few paper artworks to practise on first and we did half with the paint pumpkins and half with tissue paper pumpkins (to allow the paint to dry sufficiently).

For the paint pumpkins I cut the apple in half and used a paring knife to make a small incision into the top, and then inserted a lollipop stick, to act as a handle. We didn't have any orange paint, so I encouraged Bridget to mix some red and yellow Crayola paint together in a bowl with a paint brush until we had the desired colour, which she seemed to enjoy. We then dipped the apple fully into the paint and then placed onto the card or paper to make a delightful pumpkin print. Just do half and then set aside to dry fully. Luckily we had a sunny day so left on the window sill and they were dry in a couple of hours.

Using some orange hued tissue paper, purchased in a large pack of ten coloured sheets from Asda (only £1.00) as part of the art supplies, we ripped up small pieces then scrunched them into little balls. I drew, with pencil, a small circle for Bridget on the cards, and then she used some PVA glue with a paint brush and painted the circle, then attached the tissue paper to appear like a pumpkin.

We then used either some cut green pipe cleaner or small green fluffy pom poms to stick on top as the stalk, as well as some colouring with Crayola Washable Markers and plenty of sticker fun. We used the letters to write ‘Happy Halloween’ on a couple of them, obviously I handed Bridget each sticker and told her where to stick those ones for the spelling of the words, but they are lovely and higgledy piggledy, which I think makes them all the more fun.

Once the paint was dry we added googly eyes and plenty more stickers and colouring in – lots of fun.

Bridget and I really enjoyed this quality time together and she was super proud handing them out to her Nanny and Grandad’s too – we’ll definitely be getting some Christmas crafting bits and pieces in the next few weeks ready for the next festive season J

Messy Toddler Play: Indoor Painting

Anything relating to arts and crafts will be a sure-fire winning activity for toddlers and small children.

Messy play with paints

The sensory act of painting with brushes and encouraging your little one to get their hands wet and dirty and create hand prints with paint will keep them entertained for a good hour or more, especially when bolstered with plenty of encouragement - children thrive off of being told how well they are doing. In fact Bridget loves a little round of applause when she finishes a painting.

Hand painting

It's also a great way to help teach them their colours in a fun and interactive way.

Painting outdoors in the garden is a good way of getting fresh air and keeping the painting mess to a minimum.

Some people obviously don't have a garden and painting is also a great rainy day activity too, so painting indoors must be entertained at times and I recently discovered a great parenting hack to keep the mess to a minimum.

People have long used newspaper on the floors or on tables where painting is occurring to reduce the mess, and I thought how about cling film? Bridget has a lovely easy-wipe high chair, which actually we've very recently adjusted to a stool for her to sit right at the table with us without her little tray (at nearly two she is growing up too fast). I also use the Crayola Washable Paints which do come off in our experience, but sometimes the paint might dry without you noticing; so I wrapped Bridget's tray and the seated area in cling film and then could allow her to get as messy as she wanted without constraint - she loved it.

Learning colours with paints

Happy painting face

I also encourage paint in just knickers when warm enough as a quick bath afterwards is no trouble and this prevents clothing getting paint sploshes on, but otherwise old clothing or a little painting overalll like you can get in Early Learning Centre and the likes are worth investing in.

Bridget's birthday is fast approaching and we've bought her a little art desk complete with easel and supplies so we'll be encouraging lots more messy play this winter which will be helpful when I'm in the midst of my third trimester or when baby number two has made his/her arrival. Happy painting all :-)