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5 Easy Halloween Crafts for Kids in 2022

Celebrate the creepiest time of year with these five easy DIY Halloween crafts for kids using items you probably already have lying around your home.

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Spooky Paper BatAnne Murlowski for Family Handyman

Spooky Paper Bat

This easy DIY fall craft is perfect for little hands. Using a recycled toilet paper or paper towel roll as a base, wrap the roll in black construction paper. Fold the top together for ears, cut out and attach construction paper wings and add googly eyes to complete the monstrous look.

Fun fact to share as you craft: Even though bats aren’t actually blind, they do often use their ears to see at night with echolocation, reflecting sound to locate objects. Bats create sounds at frequencies over 100,000 waves per second — much higher than the human ear can comprehend.

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Pumpkin LanternAnne Murlowski for Family Handyman

Pumpkin Lantern

Save a couple of mason jars from your favorite pasta sauce and create a set of colorful pumpkin lanterns.

Cut tissue paper into 1-in. x 1-in. squares. Usually, one sheet of tissue paper is more than enough for a single jar. Use a paintbrush to cover the entire jar with a thin layer of Modge Podge. Attach the tissue paper squares in an overlapping pattern. Once the tissue paper covers the whole jar, seal the edges with another layer of Modge Podge and wrap a green pipe cleaner around the top of the jar.

To create a jack-o-lantern lantern, cut out a mouth, nose and eyes from black construction paper and glue them on. Finally, place a small battery-operated, flameless LED candle inside.

Fun fact to share as you craft: The term jack-o-lantern was once a description for a night watchman, walking the streets with his lantern.

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Lollipop GhostAnne Murlowski for Family Handyman

Lollipop Ghost

Coffee filters are perfectly cut and shaped to make the spookiest DIY Halloween decorations: ghosts! Place a lollipop in the center of two filters and pull the edges around, twisting at the base of the candy. Tie the neck of the ghost with a black ribbon and create the face with the help of a marker and/or googly eyes. Ruffle the edges of the coffee filter to give your ghost a little terrifying detail.

Fun fact to share as you craft: To achieve the look of a spectral haunting, special-effects artists use a technique established in the late 1800s known as Pepper’s Ghost: Reflecting an image off a mirror into a transparent sheet of acrylic to create the appearance of a spirit. This trick is how Disney’s Haunted Mansion fills a ballroom with ghostly dancers.

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Frankenstein's PuppetAnne Murlowski for Family Handyman

Frankenstein’s Puppet

Any mad scientists in your home will love making this Frankenstein puppet, and perhaps a few scary friends, to act out some spooky monster scenes.

Using a paper lunch bag as a pattern, cut green construction paper into two rectangles, matching the bottom of the folded sack and the entire side that the bottom folds upon. Using a glue stick, attach the green paper to the bag. With black and white paper, cut out details such as eyes, bolts and teeth to compete your paper bag monster’s look.

Fun fact to share as you craft: Though people often call the hulking monster with the green face Frankenstein, this was actually the last name of the doctor who created the monster, in the famous book by Mary Shelley. (The monster created by Dr. Frankenstein never received a proper name.)

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Yarn MonsterAnne Murlowski for Family Handyman

Yarn Monster

Scare away the things that go bump in the night with a friendly yarn monster.

Wrap yarn around a small piece of cardboard (approximately three inches wide) 50 times. Cut the end and carefully remove the cardboard. Tie a second piece of yarn tightly around the middle of the yarn bundle, then cut the looped edges. Flair out the yarn to make it look the way you like. Accent with googly eyes and looped pipe-cleaner arms, carefully tucked through the center of the yarn ball. You can make cat toys out of yarn, too.

Fun fact to share as you craft: Before moving to Sesame Street, Cookie Monster was born in Canada. Jim Henson initially created him for a General Foods Canada commercial, during which he gobbled up not cookies, but snack crackers.

Anne Murlowski
Anne Murlowski is a Colorado native with a love of DIY and home decor. Anne is a freelance journalist who's work has appeared on Romper, 5280 Magazine, Yellow Scene Magazine, Budget Savvy Bride, Daily Mom, Boulder Weekly and a wide variety of other publications. She lives just outside the Rocky Mountains and enjoys spending time with her family and corgi's Rogue and Raven. She covers DIY, travel, recipes, party planning, home decor, and other crafty inspiration on her blog, RockyMtnBliss.com.