This is an easy project – perfect to keep and pull out when you’re wanting 5 minutes of quiet as you prepare a delightful repast for your family.
It’s a Halloween printmaking project for kids that includes some drawing. Hopefully a very silly or scary drawing…
Materials:
- Wooden blocks or pieces of cardboard
- Halloween foam stickers or pieces of foam cut into Halloween shapes
- Ink pad
- Permanent extra-fine black marker
- White card stock
We used pre-made Halloween pumpkin stickers, and homemade bat and ghost shapes. Just draw your own shapes on the foam and cut them out with a craft knife. Scissors will give you a rough edge on the foam.
Affix your foam shapes to wooden blocks or cardboard, using a bit of Aleene’s tacky glue to stick them on. Or just use the sticker-backed foam and you can press them onto the wood.
After they’ve dried, make some stamps on paper and draw in your faces!
This is a great project to not take too seriously and have fun while experimenting. Older kids can also play with shading in the pumpkins using crosshatch lines and adding crosshatch shadows, or adding some marker or paint in after they’ve stamped.
Explore what the stamps look like as a frame around the paper (you can use it to send Grandma a Halloween letter), or if you have different Halloween creature stamps, make a Halloween party. Go a bit further and create a Halloween comic with these stamp beings.
We made the comic by sectioning the paper into boxes with a ruler and an extra-fine Sharpie. Your kids can either pre-plan the comic or stamp some stamps on there and then write about whatever they think up from looking at the pictures.
What other ideas do you have? This is the sort of simple activity that snowballs once you start – all sorts of ideas will come to mind, so let your kids just have at it and see what cool things happen!
Sound like an art project my kids would enjoy doing.
Author
Oh, great! I’m sure they’ll have fun with it.
Such a cute idea! My kids love crafts and this is a fun and quick one for us to try. Thanks!
Author
It is really fun! I hope they enjoy it- and feel free to post what they’ve done on my Facebook page!
Tried this with my kids. They absolutely loved it! Now they’re hanging their masterpieces around the house.
Author
Oh, I’m so happy to hear that! We’re pretty decorated around here for Halloween with kid projects as well!
Love the combination art and writing project for kids!! Very fun!
Author
I really love art mixed with anything else- double the learning!
Making comics with the prints is such a great idea!
Author
Thanks! It was really fun- I love when I can join in and play around with the kids while they’re making art!
Such a simple idea. I love it. We are having a children’s Halloween party soon and this will make a perfect craft activity.
Author
Oh, I’m so excited! They’ll love it, and it’s totally easy to set up for them.
I love this creative idea, especially your comic! I will be featuring this post in Afterschool host round up next Monday – thanks for sharing it!
Author
Oh, thanks so much! Can’t wait!
I love your comic! What a creative idea way to combine writing with art. Thanks for sharing it at After School!
Author
Thanks, Anna! I need to figure out more ways to combine art and writing- it’s so fun!
Everything about this project looks fun – from making your own printmaking stamps, to stamping, to adding to the stamped artwork, and even making your own comic strip. That’s a whole lotta awesome rolled into one project! I’m featuring this tomorrow on my blog at the After School Linky Party.
Author
Thanks so much for the feature! It really was fun (and easy!)
Love all the things you did with the stamps too! Faces on the pumpkin and the comic strip. We just got some new foam so I am going to try and squeeze this in.