Halloween Crafts for Children

These are some fun little crafts I have been doing with my two toddlers in the lead-up to Halloween. Traditions are important to us and we all really enjoy celebrating Samhain. On Samhain itself, our focus is on our ancestors and telling stories of the past, as well as dressing up with our children. They adore it when we all dress up and play make-believe together.

I hope that sharing these crafts with you gives you some ideas for what you can do to get creative over this period.

Apple Pumpkin Stamping

I think these are super cute and I’m not going to lie, while the main activity went as planned there was a lot of clean-up after this one! They are super easy and fun to make, even with young children. Mine are three and four and with a little bit of help, they had a great (if really messy) time making these.

It really is as simple as it looks.

All you need is an apple, some paint, a black marker (or paint) and some card or paper. I helped the children put the paint onto the apples (the easiest way seemed to be rubbing the apple around in paint on a plate) and let them stamp away. I then added the faces on with marker afterwards, once the pumpkins were dry. The children picked what sort of face they wanted and I drew them onto the card.

I will say that this activity is perfect for older children (I do it every year with the Brownies, aged 6-9 and they make a lot less mess!). Mine are probably a little bit young to do it but they had a lot of fun stamping and enjoyed the impromptu bath they NEEDED afterwards.

Summer did this with Will’s girls (who, ironically, are six and nine!) and turned them into Halloween cards for various family members. They too had a great time making this craft!

Finger painting autumn trees

This was Summer’s beautiful idea and I adore the final pieces. It was messy fun (I’d recommend you pop a plastic table mat down and put your little ones in their play clothes – and if your children love to give cuddles when they are happy you will also need to put your play clothes on too!) and the children thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

I drew the tree trunks the night before and then when we were ready to create I put small blobs of different coloured paint onto a small plate for each of them.

I also kept a wet cloth at hand to clean them down so the colours didn’t get too mixed up.

Leaf Hedgehogs

This is something I used to do with the Brownies every autumn and they loved it just as much as I did. You get to spend a nice morning outside in the woods collecting your leaves (or park or tree-lined road – go careful if on the road obviously).

When you get home, leave your leaves to dry out. While they are drying out you draw a very simple hedgehog shape onto some card (or even paper works). Draw on the little cutie’s nose and eye and then let the children glue on the leaves to create his spikey back. Older children can even do the drawing themselves.

My two got so much joy out of creating these little hedgehogs. It really helps connect us with nature and our environment when we bring it into our homes. Off the back of this little craft, we spend some time learning all about hedgehogs and how to ensure our garden and world are set up for them to thrive.

Make your own pumpkin faces

This craft was so much fun! It took a bit more effort on my part beforehand but it was absolutely worth it.

I cut out some pumpkins on orange paper and then lots of different eyes, noses and mouths on black paper. As you can see from the photos I did traditional shapes and face combinations as well as some funnier ones. I also did a few animal ones to try and give them ideas for what we could do on our pumpkins in a few weeks’ time.

If you give any of these a go with your little ones then please do let us know how it goes by leaving us a comment or tagging us on Instagram at @foxandlockes.

Livvy and Summer