Halloween Kids Crafts- Monster Wreaths

For our final Halloween project, we made monster wreaths using pom poms and googly eyes, based off these. I was intrigued by this one mainly because it gives the kids an opportunity to be as creative and hands on as they want, but also because it's a nice break from the creepier stuff that we usually see around this time of year. I've been working with A LOT of black since I started doing this, and I thought it would be nice to make something with a bit more color.

Supplies:

-Paper plates

-Pom poms, assorted

-Googly eyes, assorted

-Ribbon, for hanging

-Scissors

-Glue, any

I had no idea how many pom poms to buy, but I knew that anywhere from three to six kids would be making wreaths, so I may have gone slightly overboard. I am confident, however, that I got a diverse mix of sizes and colors, and that these kids won't run out of supplies. We ended up with four kids, and it was crazy crowded but so much fun to watch.

We started by cutting holes in the middle of our paper plates. Ideally, all you want to have of the plate is the rim. If you have a hole punch, you want to make a hole near the outer edge of each of the plates. If not, just poke a small hole with your scissors. After that we set up some glue, opened up all of the packs of pom poms and googly eyes, and let the kids do their thing. I used the same setup for the glue as I did when we made the ghost bombs, just a small bowl of white craft glue and some cotton swabs. Messier work, and a glue stick would be an easier alternative. I did still have the gallon though, so we made it work.

For the most part, the kids did all of the decorating for their wreaths by themselves. I did tell them once that it would probably look better if the pom poms covered all of the paper plate, but that only made them excited because they got to glue more stuff. As they were working, I realized that the googly eyes are literally the only thing that makes these wreaths look Halloween-y. Once again, I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that they actually used colors besides black. Each kid had their own unique color scheme, with my niece even deciding that she was only using three colors so it would look like her favorite Descendants character (I have no idea).

After the glue dries, all you have left to do is run some ribbon through the hole in the plate, tie it, and hang it up. Here are all of our finished wreaths, still waiting for the glue to dry. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any pictures of any of these hanging, because my niece and nephews took theirs home before the glue had dried, and my daughters was destroyed the next morning by my two year old son, who I have nicknamed Stitch.

My favorite part of this week was the silence that took over when the kids got really into something. I had six kids take over my house, but when they found something that caught their attention, they all became so focused and you could practically see their brains working. It was also nice to be able to step back and just watch everything come together.

Next week I will be taking a break from holiday stuff and we're gonna try to make a few different types of bird feeders.