I am so thrilled to have Sarah from How Wee Learn guest posting at Buggy and Buddy today! Her site is full of so many wonderful ways to encourage learning, and she really focuses on how to make that learning meaningful for each child. Be sure to pay her a visit after reading this fabulous post. I think you will absolutely fall in love with her site!
—————————————————————–
Fingerprint crafts are some of my favourites! They are not as messy as finger painting, but pretty close to as much fun for my wee ones. Making Halloween Treat Bags is something we also love to do – so we combined both to make these cute Fingerprint Halloween Treat Bags.
These bags are super simple – and the possibilities are endless! Better yet, they cost just over $1 to make.
To make these Halloween Treat Bags we used:
- Sturdy Gift Bags from the Dollar Store (We used very thick ones with metal fasteners at the handles — since we have big goals for this years trick-or-treating!)
- Paint (We used Acrylic, but any paint or ink would do.)
- Q-tips or Paint Brushes to add details
- Googly eyes (optional, but always added cuteness)
My Madeline (age 11) made Jack-O-Lantern Fingerprints. She first mixed the colours. (I love having my wee ones mix their own paint colours – great learning and I think it adds to their creativity choosing their own shade of paint.) She mixed dark red with yellow and decided to brighten it up a bit more by adding some brighter red.
She then dipped her thumb into the orange paint and pressed it sideways onto the bag. In hind sight I think her fingerprint would have showed up a bit better if we had painted her thumb with a thin coat of paint. Next time! She then added a green stem and black eyes and mouth using a Q-tip.
Sammy (age 3) made a ghost treat bag. He dipped his fingers in white paint and dotted them all over the bag. I tried to have him use only his thumb and really press to make a good ghostly shape — but he is three — so he ended up using all of his fingers and doing lots of “ghost dots”.
I then thought it would be cute to paint his whole hand to make a big ghost for the middle. Sammy can be a little unsure of certain sensory activities lately – but he was very excited about this one! We painted his hand as he held his fingers together and stuck it on the bag (which I had turned upside down). He liked it so much he did it twice. (In fact I had to give him a piece of paper to continue his art on, or the whole bag would have turned white. It seems my finger painter is back!)
Once it was all dry he added eyes with black paint using a Q-tip. The big ghosts, I felt, deserved some big cute googly eyes.
During this craft we talked about: the biggest and smallest ghosts and pumpkins, counted how many of each there were, and (for my daughter) talked about the best way we could quickly figure out how many eyes we would need (multiplying).
I think these Fingerprint Halloween Treat Bags turned out very cute. And there are so many more possibilities. We could make fingerprint spiders, or witches faces, or candy corn, or cauldrons … almost anything!
Well, our costumes are picked, our treat bags are ready, now the challenge – holding my wee ones back until the 31st!
How Wee Learn | Facebook | Pinterest
—————————————————————–
Don’t you just love these treat bags from How Wee Learn? Such a simple (and inexpensive) activity! And I love how Sarah showed how the activity can be adapted to fit any age. Lucy and Theo actually don’t have any treat holders yet- this is just what we needed to inspire us!
Please be sure to visit How We Learn and let her know how much you loved her post on Buggy and Buddy. You are sure to find tons of inspiration to build on your children’s natural wonder and love of learning.
Here’s a couple of my favorite posts from How We Learn. Be sure to check them out!
Alphabet Games for Preschoolers: The Letter Monster!
Games to Play in the Dark (and why you should!)