Spooky Halloween Door!

  The school I work at is having a Halloween door decorating contest, so of course, my first thought was to get the kids involved! They loved making these Q-tip skeleton hands and the white painted ghosts. The contest begins soon and whoever gets the most votes will win a class set of books and a pizza party! Wish us luck!!!

 

Materials:

• Yellow & Black Butcher Block Paper (or construction paper)
• Orange, White& Black Construction Paper
• Q-tips
• White Paint
• Green Tissue Paper
• Elmer's Glue 
• Black Paint Pen

    I made the skeleton hands the day before I assembled the door because they require a good amount of Elmer's glue that needs to dry overnight.   Allow the kids to trace their hand on a half sheet of black construction paper, some may need extra help with this, but encourage them to try. Use a pencil on the black construction paper so you can see the outline.
   Then, allow the kids to coat the hand, generously, with Elmer's glue.  Use Q-tips of various sizes  and let the kids assemble the 'bones' on their hand.  Pre-cut several Q-tips ahead of time; I kept some whole and cut some into halves and thirds.  You can account for about 6-7 Q-tips per child.

 To make the ghosts, I just taped large sheets of black butcher block paper to the tables and allowed the kids to use white paint to fill in ghost shapes I drew on the paper. Drawing a ghost shape is easy, it's basically a sheet with waves on the bottom :)
   These turned out great and I let the kids sprinkle some ghost shimmer (glitter) onto the wet paint. They really shine on the door and the kids love them. I added the faces once they dried with a black paint pen. I'll let each child bring one home when we take them down, as well as the skeleton hand that I labeled so each child can bring their own home!

   As for the rest of the door, I googled an image search for a 'haunted house' and drew the shape onto a black piece of construction paper with a regular pencil. I then cut out the windows and doors and taped it to the door and added a yellow moon shape behind it, also in construction paper. The hill was made the same way. 
   The yellow butcher paper covers two thirds of the door and the green tissue paper, crinkled up, covers the bottom third.  The graves were made out of white construction paper, sharpie and a gray crayon. The pumpkins were drawn with sharpie on an orange piece on construction paper and a green piece or curled gift ribbon was taped behind them.
   I added the graves, then the kid's skeleton hands on top of the graves...They took a few pieces of rolled up tape each but they are staying up :)
  I hope you enjoyed my Halloween door!!! I'm so excited to see if we win the pizza party, I might just buy pizza for my kids anyway...they helped and they deserve it!
       Happy Halloween!