My 8th school Halloween disco.
Not a favourite date in the diary by any stretch, but of course the kids love every mad moment of it. I've been especially bah-humbug about the whole thing this time, because they're at new schools, and I'd let myself believe we wouldn't have to go. No such luck. They've been on the phone to their old friends haven't they, and then the pleading and begging started. To be fair, I got some good bribery mileage out of it - homeworks have been done, rooms have been tidied, so can't complain really.
And I like Halloween, minus the crazy, sugar-fuelled, ear-splitting dancefest.
We usually do a family night of party games sometime during Half Term - all the old favourites, like dunking for apples, getting sweets out of a pile of flour with your teeth, and best of all, trying to bite doughnuts off dangly strings, which is hilarious. If you haven't had a go at this for a while I urge you to string up some buns..
Making the room look spooky is always fun. Love all that stuff. The Bat Mobile from last year is still swinging from the light in the toy room, though missing a ghost and a few bat wings. There have been plenty of other loo roll creations since then, and I've also gathered up an impressive hoard of egg boxes, so that's what we've used to make mini Halloweeen figures.
If you'd like to have a go, you'll need an egg box with the cone bits down the middle like this.
Cut one out for a bat and paint it.
Fold a piece of paper in half and draw a bat wing, using the fold so it opens up. Glue onto the back.
We used bits of white paper for the eyes and teeth.
Spread a decent layer of glue where you want the face to be (a glue stick is good for this). The eyes are little triangles coloured in with a green highlighter pen. The fangs are triangles too, joined together with a tiny rectangle. If this all sounds too fiddly I'd suggest going for a non-black bat, and using felt-tips, or a tipex pen if you have one.
For the ears, colour in a thin strip of spare card from something like a cereal box. Cut two longish pieces from it and snip them into points at one end. Make slots on top of the bat's head and push them in.
Take another egg box cone for the ghost, and glue down a few layers of white tissue, making sure to keep the tissue flat on one side, so you can draw a face.
Chop off all the bits hanging over the edge and snip what's left to make it look raggedy and ghoulish.
I'll post the witch and the pumpkin instructions v shortly. Hang on to that egg box!
Plenty more spooky pics over at The Gallery.