Four Halloween Play Activities with Recycled Crafts
This article was co-published by Second Chance Toys, one of our ‘Play It Forward’ partners.
Hooray for Halloween! The holiday of sweet treats, spooky tricks, and costumes sparked by the imagination—no wonder it’s a favorite for all ages to enjoy! As you and your children prepare for the festivities, use this holiday for more than just collecting candy.
With these entertaining craft projects that turn used items and materials (like all those candy wrappers) into brand-new artistic masterpieces, Halloween is a fantastic time to talk about the value of recycling. Here are four recycling-based art projects that celebrate upcycling, the Halloween spirit, and skill development.
Black & Orange Recycled-Materials Collage:
This project is a good, easy way to get your kid interested in recycling. Start by encouraging your child to save abandoned items like bottle caps, paper towel rolls, juice boxes, candy wrappers, and other little items. Because they can be altered and defined by the child’s mind, these open-ended materials are excellent for imaginative play.
Invite your youngster to create a collage by adhering recyclable items to a piece of cardboard or canvas after they have a sizable collection. This type of “process art” helps kids acquire a variety of crucial skills, including inventiveness, planning, problem solving, and fine motor development, as they build from the unknowable.
Allow their finished sculptural collage to dry for at least 24 hours. Your youngster can use orange and black paint to paint over their three-dimensional collage once the glue has dried to make a colourful, monochromatic collage with a Halloween theme.
Materials needed: recycled materials, canvas or cardboard, paint, paintbrushes
Toilet Paper Roll Characters and Literacy Adventures:
Never again dispose of your toilet paper rolls! Believe it or not, toilet paper rolls make the ideal recycled material for a variety of crafts, including this one that fosters literacy and storytelling abilities. This Halloween, transform your used cardboard rolls into entertaining characters or creatures, then begin telling your child stories about exciting new adventures.
Start by sharing a book about Halloween with your kids. Inquire from them regarding the character traits they pick up on. Together, list each of these characteristics. Encourage children to design their cardboard tubes after the story is finished so they can create their own characters. Your child’s cardboard characters open the door for them to hone their reading, writing, and narrative abilities whether they choose to recreate the story they just read or invent a brand-new one from beginning.
Toilet paper rolls, recycling materials, markers, paint, confetti (optional), and googly eyes are required items.
Candy Wrapper Origami:
If your home looks anything like mine after Halloween night, your floor is covered in candy wrappers! Instead of tossing them, use all those colorful wrappers to practice origami, the art of paper folding! This engaging, focused activity helps children hone their fine motor ability and practice perseverance. Check out this list of fun shapes and figures that your child can create using nothing more than their hands and upcycled wrappers. Happy folding!
Candy wrappers (or discovered papers) in a variety of patterns and colours are required.
Cardboard Haunted House:
One of my favourite unrestricted playthings is a carton of cardboard. They enable kids to design their own area where they can act out their make-believe worlds. Perhaps a cardboard box can be transformed into a space shuttle travelling to the moon, a castle with a dragon inside, or a local coffee shop serving the greatest milkshakes in town.
Invite your kid to create their own spooky house for Halloween! Get a sizable cardboard box first, ideally one that your youngster can climb inside of. Then, set up a station with a variety of open-ended supplies to spark their creativity: pipe cleaners, buttons, markers, paints, stickers, and recycled scraps (such as caps, plastic bottles, and aluminium foil).
Use a box cutter to help your child (or a more mature child) carve out a door and some windows. Encourage their creative process while they work by posing open-ended queries. These questions invite more than just “yes” or “no” answers. Try asking yourself questions like, “What do you think you might see if you went inside a haunted house,” or “Imagine what it might feel like to live in a haunted house.” Children can develop a narrative for their play experience with the aid of open-ended remarks.
Additionally, they provide individuals the freedom to continue to direct their own creative processes, which encourages independence and intrinsic motivation.
Box cutter, cardboard scraps (for roof and details), a range of open-ended materials for decorating, and a cardboard box are the necessary components.
Create Craft
