Peek-a-boo Card: Haunted House

It's OCTOBER! That means we really get to dive into Halloween! One of my favorite holidays for sure! Candy, costumes, COLOR! All good things start with C. Cookie Monster and I are of the same mind.

And CARDS! We love making and mailing cards. They are a great, fun craft and a fantastic way to show your love. Who doesn't like getting a card in the mail? Nobody, that's who.

This is a neat lift-the-flap card that my octopi and I designed together especially for our favorite people last Halloween. (And I had to wait a WHOLE year to post it, do you know how hard that was for me!? Do you!?)

It was a fun project the kids really got into and allowed them to put as much craziness into it as they wanted while making a really cool finished product they felt pretty proud of. (So did I, I admit it.) The materials are basic, the result awesome. Just how we like our projects around here.

What You Need:

• Card stock. We cut ours to fit a business envelope when it was folded, so 8.5"x8" or you can use the pre-drawn printable at the bottom if your octopi just want to color.
• Gluestick
• Exact-o knife or craft knife
• crayons, markers, etc.

What You Do:

1. Take your cardstock and fold in half so it's 8.5"x 4".
2. On the front of the card, draw your haunted house with nice good-sized windows that will be easy to cut, big enough to draw a cute picture inside but small enough to fit a few peek-a-boo windows. We found 6-8 1"-1.5" windows to be a good size but it doesn't really matter so long as there's enough room around the windows to glue and seal up the card.
3. Unfold your card and putting your card window-up on a cutting surface, cut out the windows on 3 sides (top, bottom, right) so to make flaps that open and shut.
4. Open up all the flaps and refold the card so you see the underside. Trace out the window openings. 
5. Open up the card and have your octopus color monsters in each of the traced out boxes. It helped my younger octopus if I colored around the windows so he knew what NOT to color. Those areas won't be seen once you seal up the card.
6. On the inside, glue all around the windows and along all the edges of the card.
7. Fold the front over the glued inside and seal it up.
8. Now have your octopus color the outside of the haunted house.
9. Peek-a-boo!

The printable:

Pumpkin Collage Card

For this craft we cut a pumpkin shape out of a folded piece of card stock, not cutting around the top fold so it was a card that opened up. Then my octopus glued on orange paper squares on the front and then made a face with cut black shapes. He finished it up by coloring the stem with marker. On the inside he wrote to his friend. Easy peasy.

Leaf Rubbings

The other day my kindergartener wanted to collect leaves and send them to relatives. Since I am pretty sure everyone in our family has plenty of their own leaves falling in copious amounts on their lawns at the moment, I suggested we do something more artistic with the leaves we found. We settled on the easy to do and totally satisfying leaf rubbing. It takes no time at all and not much in the way of materials and they're ones I'm sure you have.

What You Need:
broken, unwrapped lengths of crayon (we love a craft that uses these- I hate to toss them, but who needs broken crayons!?)
white paper
flat fall leaves (We made ourselves a little adventure just collecting these.)
masking tape, optional.

What You do:

1. On one piece of white paper lay out your leaves in whatever pattern you chose.
2. Lay the paper you're going to color on flat on top of your leaves Secure it in the corners with tape. This helps to keep it from moving when your octopus is rubbing.
3. Take a broken bit of crayon and rub it along the paper, over the leaves, on its side (not the ends!)
4. Watch your leaves come out!

My kid really loved doing this a lot more than I expected. It was kind of like digging for treasure (or fossils!). He never knew which leaf was going to pop up and the more colors he used the better it came out.

A neat thing to do with an older kid would be to collect one of several varieties and label the rubbings with the tree species.

Handprint Turkey

A couple years ago my sister sent these Thanksgiving cards out with my niece's handprint. I thought it was brilliant then, I think it's brilliant now. And totally worth sharing this Thanksgiving.


What You Need:

• brown craft paint. (the nontoxic kid-friendly variety.)
• orange or yellow card stock (or whatever festive colors you choose.)
• orange and red markers
• glue
• small googly eyes

What You Do:

• Put a healthy amount of brown paint onto a paper plate, spread it around.
• Get your octopus to spread their fingers and smash their hand in that mess as nicely and flatly as you can. (Yeah, right!) Smack that nice and flat painted hand quickly, firmly and without moving it around onto the card stock. Let it dry.
• Draw that gobbler on (what is that really called?) in red marker, the feet and beak in orange.
• Stick a googly eye on it.

You didn't really need me to write all this out, did you?



Also, while I am at and it IS Thanksgiving, I want to say I am grateful for:

1. The internet.
2. Creativity, in me, in my kids, in everyone I know.
3. Family and friends.

Trace a Turkey

Spiff's Turkeys are pecking at the grass on a rainy day.

This is the age-old school craft that is so easy and fun to do. Plus, it documents your child's growth through the years. The Hand-Traced Turkey. We went simple with just markers on plain white paper, but you can go fancier with craft feathers glued on or trace your hands onto brown paper. You can make gift bags tracing turkeys onto brown paper lunch bags. Really, with the simple crafts the sky is the limit.

Cut and Paste: Cornucopia

Since Thanksgiving is upon us (How did THAT happen!?), I was on a mission to find what I thought would be a simple cut and paste cornucopia. I wanted my kids to be able to cut out the fruits and vegetables and paste them onto the horn of plenty. After looking, and looking, I gave up and made my own. Ever my test-subject, my 4 year old colored, cut and glued this all by himself. I was pretty impressed. You don't have to be, but I was. ;-)

Spiff's Cornucopia:

The Printable:

Pressed Leaf Collage

It's fun to go out hunting for colorful leaves but what to do with them? Spiff had collected so many leaves last year that I was on a mission to do something crafty rather than just toss them.

This is a great, easy fall craft I found online last year. And it's a good way to use old broken crayons bits, to boot. Spiff made several for friends and family to ring in the fall season. He wanted to make so many, we had to go out and collect MORE leaves. This year when I pulled it out to hang, last year's craft looks as nice as when it was first made. (Actually that picture is of the one we kept last year taken today.)


What You Need:

• wax paper
• colorful fall leaves (you might want to press them in between heavy books for a couple of days before doing this.)
• old crayon bits in bright fall colors- greens, reds, yellows., etc.
• crayon sharpener
• scissors
• iron

What You Do:

• Heat your iron to medium dry heat.
• Shave your crayon bits in your sharpener until you have a nice pile for sprinkling over your artwork. Set aside.
• Tear off two pieces of wax paper big enough for your leaves to fit comfortably. Lay one down flat on your protected work surface. (Cut-open brown paper bags are a good way to cover your table.)
• Let your Octopus arrange the fall leaves on the wax paper.
• Octopus, sprinkle the crayon bits around your leaves on the wax paper.
• Gently lay the other piece of wax paper on top.
• Lay another piece of brown paper or paper towels on top to protect your iron (the crayon wax will squish out the sides a little) and then press and slowly iron your artwork.
• Let cool. When it's cool, trim the edges and hang in a window.

"Stained Glass" Leaves

It's fall! The season for beautiful colors and leaf piles for jumping, apples and pumpkins and that fresh cool air that is just perfect for sleep. This week, the kids and I made pretty nifty (if I do say so myself) "stained glass" leaves for the windows out of some construction paper and tissue paper. Tissue paper is really pretty awesome when you shine some light through it and it's cheap and easy to work with. Plus, I don't know about you, but I always seems to have some kicking around.

What You Need:

• Tissue Paper in fall colors- red, yellow, orange, etc.
• a piece of black construction paper (though it really could be whatever color, the black just looks nice!)
• scissors
• glue, in paste or stick form, whatever.

What You Do:
Print up the leaf template below and cut out the leaf shape you want. Cut strips of tissue paper in varying widths (half an inch to an inch) and in varying lengths that will span the leaf templates. (Really they don't have to be perfect and this is a great time for little hands to practice cutting). You just need enough tissue to span the leaf.

Fold the black piece of paper in half and trace the leaf template onto the paper with pencil. Then cut out the shape through BOTH layers of black . (OK, here you need precision. So you do this while your octopus cuts tissue). Now if the pencil marks bug you (as they do me!) unfold the paper and refold it so the pencil lines are on the inside. :-)

Open the paper back up. Now you have two cut out mirror-image leaves. glue around the right leaf on the black paper. Now spanning the leaf, stick on the tissue strips any which way you feel like it, layer it up, don't, whatever, it all looks great!

Glue around the other, tissue-less, left leaf, getting the edges too.

Now sandwich that piece of black paper back together so the leaves match up, and Voila! Trim any tissue that might have come out the sides and hang it up in a sunny window.

Perty!

The Printable: