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Halloween crafts

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art how to

Create fun, fantastic and freaky faces! Kids draw a monster on a paper plate and give it glue eyes with food coloring pupils. Then comes the fun part: one touch of a soapy cotton swab sends the color swirling outward as surface tension tugs it toward the edges. It's a Halloween science trick for ages 5–12 that takes less than 30 minutes, and every monster ends up with its own wild stare.

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Gather your materials.

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Draw a monster mouth on a paper plate.

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Make circles with glue for the eyes.

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Add drops of food coloring for the pupils.

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Dip a cotton swab in dish soap.

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Carefully touch the pupils with the cotton swab and watch as the eyes transform!

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Monster Eyes.

This spooky science trick is brought to you by "surface tension". Water molecules are tight-knit best friends that love to cling to one another, pulling tightly together at the surface to form a flexible, invisible "skin" called surface tension. When you drop food coloring onto water, or in this case glue, the lightweight dye floats gently on top of this stretched-out liquid shield. But the moment a drop of dish soap hits the surface, it acts like a molecular wrecking ball! Soap molecules have a hydrophilic (water-loving) head and a hydrophobic (water-repelling) tail, which rushes in to wedge itself between the water molecules, instantly shattering their strong bonds. As the surface tension collapses at the center, the remaining unbroken surface water snaps backward toward the edges of the bowl, dragging the food coloring along with it in a burst of swirling colors.

paper plates

glue

markers

food coloring

cotton swabs

dish soap

Monster Eyes

battery

Halloween decorations

animals

electronics

science project

flight

Looking for some new and innovative halloween decor? Let your kids try their hand at creating a battery-powered spinning bat sculpture!

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Cut out a roughly 10 inch length of thin copper wire.

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Sand paper both ends of the wire.

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Fold wire in half.

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Sand paper the crease.

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Shape the wire into a box shape, with the crease in the middle.

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Attach a stack of magnets to the negative end of a battery.

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Balance the wire on the battery to the crease sits on top and the wire ends touch the magnets. The wire should start spinning.

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Cut out two identical bat shapes and an oval out of black paper.

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Use hot glue to stick the bat shapes to the top of the wire, and the oval to the battery.

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Now balance the wire on the battery and watch as the bat starts spinning.

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Electric Spinning Bat.

thin copper wire

 neodymium magnets

sand paper

black paper

hot glue gun

scissors

Electric Spinning Bat

fall

craft

Looking for a spooky prank to pull? Create one of these fast flipping, rubber band powered bat wings and sneak them into books and under boxes to surprise your friends.

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Loop and knot two small rubber bands on big end of a safety pin.

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Bend the other end of the safety pin.

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Straighten out a paper clip and make a loop.

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Slip rubber bands into paper clip.

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Push clip ends through bent safety pin end.

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Bend and split the paper clip ends.

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Cut big and small bat wing shapes out of black paper.

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Tape wings to the paper clip ends and the bottom of the safety pin.

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Wind the wings around 30-40 times to tighten.

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Releasing the wings causes them to spin back around quickly.

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Wind and release the wings on a surface to watch them jump and flutter.

Bats are among the most nimble flyers in the animal kingdom, capable of darting through pitch-black forests and swooping to catch tiny insects mid-flight with pinpoint precision. While birds rely on rigid, feathered wings that mostly flap up and down, a bat’s wing is made of thin, elastic skin stretched over flexible, multi-jointed finger bones. This unique structure allows a bat to independently bend and twist different parts of its wings in milliseconds, continuously altering their curvature and surface area. By making these split-second adjustments, bats can make sharp 180-degree turns on a dime and reach flight speeds exceeding 30 miles per hour—with the Brazilian free-tailed bat even reaching horizontal speeds over 60 miles per hour in straightaways!&nbsp;

safety pins

small rubber bands

paper clips

clear tape

Fluttering Bat Wings

art project

puppets

A great bat craft for Halloween! This flapping bat puppet comes together quickly, so you can spend the rest of your time putting on spooky puppet shows.

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Gather your materials.&nbsp;

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Fold paper in half and draw bat shape.

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Cut out the bat.

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Add eyes and draw fangs.

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Glue a straw on the center of the bat.

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Fold a piece of string in half and thread it through the straw.

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Tape each end of the string to a wing.

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Pull down on the string.

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The bat’s wings flap!

Unlike birds or insects, bats fly using what are essentially super-stretched hands! Inside a bat’s wing are tiny, lightweight arm bones and four incredibly long finger bones, all covered by a thin, flexible skin membrane called the patagium. Because a bat has so many jointed fingers hidden inside its wings, it can bend and twist them in midair to instantly change shape and direction. That high-level flexibility gives bats incredible control, letting them dive, do tight flips, and scoop up bugs on the fly with agility that leaves most feathered birds in the dust.

white colored pencil

wiggly eyes

straw

string

tape

Bat Puppet

circuit

pumpkin

Harness the power of pumpkins with a pumpkin battery and see how many volts it can produce! This project is pretty similar to another DIY we’ve featured, the <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/diy/Science-Projects-for-Kids/3/project/Lemon-Battery/2772" target="_self">Lemon Battery.</a> Just like with the lemon, pumpkins have acidic juices inside that help transport electrical energy. Lemons are more acidic, so that’s why they’re the normal go-to for building batteries. For fall time, here’s how to do the same thing with pumpkins!

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Gather your pumpkin battery materials!

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Stick a copper strip and a zinc strip in opposite sides of each pumpkin. 

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Connect the copper strip from one pumpkin to the zinc strip in the other pumpkin with the alligator clip.

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Connect the black lead from the multimeter to the remaining zinc strip and the red lead to the remaining copper strip. 

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To see how powerful your pumpkin battery is, turn the multimeter to the V with the line above it!

V stands for volts. You should have approximately 1.5 V. If you don’t, check your connections. 

How does the pumpkin battery work?The acid in the pumpkin is still strong enough to get electricity moving. It starts by dissolving charged ions of zinc off of the zinc metal. The zinc ions leave behind extra electrons in the zinc metal, which travel over to the copper through the wire. That movement of electrons creates electricity! However, the flow would eventually stop if it only went into the copper and didn’t have anywhere else to go. The copper would get too packed with electrons. So where do the electrons go? Back into the pumpkin juice! The acid in the pumpkin also has ions of hydrogen in it, and they love to grab onto loose electrons. The hydrogen takes electrons from the copper, and the flow continues to go.

Check out our other DIY, the <a href="https://www.kiwico.com/diy/Science-Projects-for-Kids/3/project/Lemon-Battery/2772">Lemon Battery</a>, if you want to make more fruit-based batteries. What other fruits and vegetables can you use to make electricity flow? You could try a potato, an apple, a banana, or a head of lettuce!

pumpkins (2)

alligator clip

copper strips (2)

zinc strips (2)

multimeter

Pumpkin Battery

STEM

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indoor project

Design and build a little automaton with a big personality. What kind of monster will you make?

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Use a large plastic cup and trace four circles on the cardboard. Cut the four circles out. 

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Use school glue to glue two of the circles together to create a thicker cam. For faster results, let an adult apply hot glue. 

67 creative halloween projects for kids

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