Halloween Sun-catchers Craft

Yesterday, the girls (3 years old) made some Halloween decorations for our window using contact paper and colored tissue paper.  We've been using this technique over the past year to make everything from fall leaves to spring flowers, but this time we gave it a Halloween twist.  These decorations look gorgeous in the sunlight and the girls were very proud of their work.  Here are the steps..

I traced some Halloween cookie-cutter shapes onto a piece of contact paper (I use Avery self-laminating sheets).  Then I took the backing paper off, placed the contact sheet sticky-side-up and invited the kids to tear up pieces of colored tissue paper and stick them on:

The cool thing about this project is that the tissue paper does not need to stay in the lines because the shapes will get cut out anyway, and the tissue paper doesn't have to stay in one layer - more layers make an even cooler effect in the sun.  I first did this type of project with the girls when they were only 2 years old.  They needed more assistance at that age, but it still turned out beautiful.  Here are the contact sheets after the tissue paper was placed on them:

When the kids were done, I place another contact sheet on top, and cut the shapes out.  L and E had a good time playing with their shapes:

This technique would be fun to use for creating math manipulatives (you could sing 'Five Little Pumpkins', for example), or as dramatic play props for telling stories.  After a little bit of play making up a story about a ghost and his friend the cat who were scared away by some bats in the pumpkin patch... we taped our decorations to the window..

These simple Halloween kid-made crafts turned out festive and beautiful. 

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