Our favorite Halloween arts and crafts for kids include fun ways to create spiders, bats, Jack-o’-lanterns, and more. Get creative as you celebrate and decorate for Halloween as a family!
There are some art activities and craft projects that are just perfect for Halloween. And there are some art activities that are great anytime but that lend themselves well to seasonal and holiday art. I’m going to share some of both today.
Many of these are activities that I have done again and again over the years with my family, with my children’s friends, and with my art classes and groups.
I have blog posts about many of these or similar activities and will link up where I can.
13 Awesome Halloween Arts and Crafts for Kids
NOTE: I also just finished creating video tutorials and printables for each of these Halloween activities for the KIDS ART SPOT, my online art club for kids and families. (Click here if you’d like more information about joining the KIDS ART SPOT.)
1. Pumpkin Decorating (of course!)
Carving pumpkins is a Halloween tradition, but it’s not terribly little-kid friendly. Decorating your pumpkins is totally different though and very kid friendly! You can start decorating your pumpkins as early as they become available in the pumpkin patches, stores, and farms, get into the Halloween spirit, and have great Halloween decorations all month long.
Here are 12 kids pumpkin decorating ideas using process art techniques such as pour painting, sticker art, drawing and doodling, and making faces out of modelling clay.
2. Halloween Playdough Play
Creating and playing with playdough is great all year round and is wonderfully adaptable to using with seasonal and holiday themes.
- For Halloween, you can make a batch of pumpkin spice playdough (add pumpkin spice mix or cinnamon to a batch of no-cook orange playdough) and use it to make playdough Jack-o’-lanterns or pretend food.
- You can make a batch of black playdough for spiders, bats, witches, and cats.
- Or use any color playdough with fun poke-ins to make monsters.
The best poke-ins for Halloween playdough play include pipecleaners (here’s a halloween set) and big googly eyes.
3. Fingerprint Halloween Art
We love fingerprint art! Press your finger or thumb to a stamp pad, then to paper, to create fingerprints in any color. Then add details with a pen to turn your fingerprints into spiders, bats, Jack-o’-lanterns, witches, ghosts, cats, or anything you like! You can make entire scenes out of fingerprint art!
Note: Ed Emberley’s Complete Funprint Drawing Book is the one that started it all for us. Highly recommended!
4. Watercolor Resist Spiderwebs and Jack-O’-Lanterns
Watercolor resist art is the best! And it’s great for any artwork, including seasonal and holiday art! For Halloween, you can simply draw any Halloween image with oil pastels or crayons, then paint over the drawing with watercolor paint. If you’re creating a night sky effect with dark watercolor paint (blue, purple, black), sprinkle salt on the still-wet watercolors to create a starry night sky effect.
Try watercolor resist spiderwebs, pumpkins, Jack-o’-lanterns, ghosts, haunted houses, bats, cats, witches, monsters, anything!
5. Glue Resist Halloween Art
Here’s a glue resist art project for kids that gives them the opportunity to squeeze out glue to their hearts content. :) Use a bottle of squeeze glue to “draw” a Halloween picture such as pumpkins, Jack-o’-lanterns, or spiderwebs. And then paint the whole thing with watercolor paint once the glue has dried.
You can see lots of examples of glue resist halloween art here.
6. Halloween Raised Salt Painting
Raised salt painting is an all-time kid favorite. Seriously. It’s the best! You can do it on a black background (black cardstock, poster board, or foam core) to make it extra Halloweeny, but it is also great on a white background or on cardboard. Again, use Halloween images to turn this perennial favorite into a Halloween art activity.
By the way, you can use either liquid watercolor paint for this OR you can water down some food coloring. Either works fine.
7. Jack-O’-Lantern Suncatchers
Use orange and yellow tissue paper to make a Halloween suncatcher on transparent contact paper. Cut out a Jack-o’-lantern face out of black construction paper before adding the top piece of contact paper. A paper plate with the center cut out frames the whole thing nicely and is fun to decorate. Or you can do one in an embroidery hoop (like this).
Here’s another way to make an easy Jack-o’-lantern suncatcher.
Or make a melted bead Jack-o’-lantern suncatcher for something more permanent.
8. Coffee Filter Spiderwebs
Spiderwebs are easy and fun to make from coffee filters! Plus they make great decorations for Halloween, whether grouped in a window as we do it, or on a wall or collaged onto an artwork. Simply fold a white basket-style coffee filter in half, then again, and again (as if you’re folding a paper snowflake), and cut notches along one side. Add little spiders cut out of black construction paper and you’re good to go!
9. Clementine Jack-O’-Lanterns
We’ve been drawing Jack-O’-Lantern faces on our clementines for years! They are great for Halloween parties or to pack in a school lunch. Plus, it’s a fun way for kids to practice Jack-o’-lantern faces on a small scale before starting in on carving a big pumpkin.
Simply draw a face on a clementine with a black Sharpie marker. Experiment with different expressions and facial features.
10. Tape Skeletons
Making skeletons out of pieces of masking tape is great way for kids to explore anatomy. Plus it makes for a spooky fun Halloween artwork or decoration!
You can do this on a small scale by tracing a stuffed animal or doll first, then adding the tape skeleton. Or you can do it on a real-life scale by tracing your own body like we did with these tape resist skeletons. (To turn your tape skeleton into tape-resist, simply paint over the tape skeleton artwork with black (or any color paint), then peel away the tape.)
11. Halloween Paper Chains
You can make Halloween paper chains the same way you would make a paper doll chain, but instead of cutting out a person, you cut out ghosts, bats, pumpkins, cats, etc.
Simply fold a piece of construction paper accordion style, draw your Halloween image on the top piece of paper, cut through all the layers, then unfold. You can glue or tape multiple paper chain sections together to make a longer one. And you can draw details on each if you like, such as ghost or Jack-o’-lantern faces.
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12. Double Doodle Art for Halloween
Double doodle art is great for any time of the year, but there are so many symmetrical Halloween images that it’s fun to explore this drawing activity around Halloween. Try cats, witches, spiders, spiderwebs, Jack-o’-lanterns, owls, bats, and ghosts.
13. Marble Painted Spiderwebs
Use the super fun action art activity of painting with marbles to make your own spiderweb art. Try white or silver paint on top of black construction paper then glue on your own paper spiders. (Check out the wall hanging below that we made by grouping together three of these!)
Aren’t those some great Halloween arts and crafts for kids and families?!
You can do them on your own with the help of the blog posts (if so, make sure to pin this post)!
If you’d like more guidance, in the form of video tutorials and step-by-step printables, as well as an easily searchable “Art Room” of art activities and an app to make it all extra accessible on tablets and phones, you may like to join the KIDS ART SPOT, my online art club for kids and families. (Click here for more information about the KIDS ART SPOT.) These Halloween activities (plus more Halloween crafts and printables!) are all inside the KIDS ART SPOT in a format that makes it easy for kids to do the activities on their own or for a family to create together.
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