Create Craft
Four Halloween Play Activities with Recycled Crafts
This article was co-published by Second Chance Toys, one of our ‘Play It Forward’ partners.
Happy Halloween, everyone! It’s no surprise that Halloween is a favourite among people of all ages with its sweet snacks, terrifying tricks, and imaginative costumes. Take advantage of this holiday for more than simply candy collection as you and your kids get ready for the celebrations. 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.
Let them finish their sculptural assemblage and thengive it at least 24 hours to dry. 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 required: cardboard or canvas, paint, paintbrushes, and recycled materials.
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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:
Your floor is covered in candy wrappers if your house after Halloween night resembles mine in the least! Use all of those colourful wrappers to practise the paper folding art of origami rather than throwing them away! Children can improve their fine motor skills and tenacity skills with the aid of this interesting, concentrated exercise. Check out this collection of entertaining shapes and figures that your kid can make with just their hands and recycled wrappers. Glad 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 these instead:
Imagine what it could be like to live in a haunted house, or “What do you think you might see if you went inside 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rose & Rex was founded by Allison Klein. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a B.A. in Anthropology, minoring in Psychology and Writing, and earning a dual M.S.ED in Early Childhood and Childhood Education from Bank Street College of Education. Allison conducted research on the value of imaginative play for young children’s development while she was a doctoral student. She then used the findings in the pre-kindergarten classrooms where she worked. Allison was inspired to initiate a comprehensive discussion on play’s value for kids in today’s results-driven culture as she observed her students develop and change via play.
Now a play-based tutor, Allison enjoys exploring Central Park, sipping matcha tea, and doing Pilates when she’s not working with kids or playing with blocks. Allison, a native New Yorker, enjoys the wealth of practical learning possibilities that can be found on every block where she resides on the Upper East Side.