More Halloween toddler crafts – Pipe cleaner spiders and paper bat

Here are some ideas for easy Halloween crafts for toddlers that I made with my three year old last week. They use very cheap and fairly basic materials that you might have at home already or can pick up quite cheaply.

Paper plate or paper/card bat

We made this bat using black construction paper but you could also use black cardboard or a paper plate painted black.

Draw around a plate – a large side plate or small dinner plate is a good size – and cut out the shape from your paper or card. Do this a second time so you have two circles. If you are using paper plates, paint two of them black and leave to dry.

Take one of the circles and fold up concertina style then cut in half so you have two semicircles. Open these out – these are your bat’s wings. Glue the wings onto the back of the other circle.

Using chalk, white paint or stickers – googly eyes are good – give your bat a face. You could also add string or ribbon to hang it up, or fix up using blu-tack.

Pom Pom and pipe cleaner spider

I bought a pack of multi-coloured pipe cleaners a while ago thinking we could use them for all kinds of crafts. When I was a child money was tight and craft products weren’t so easy or cheap to get hold of as they are now, and I remember often lacking pipe cleaners needed for a particular project (probably something on Blue Peter). Ironically now I have some I can’t think of anything to do with pipe cleaners!

One thing that I did come across online was a spider. I also had a packet of different coloured and different sized pom-poms. Here is what you do:

Take four black pipe cleaners and cut in half so you have eight legs. Line them up and twist around the centre (or secure the centre with a piece of string or a small piece of another pipe cleaner). Bend each of the legs so the spider will stand up.

Glue the pom pom to the middle of the pipe cleaners – I found that Tacky Glue worked best – and glue on some googly eyes.