Kid's Halloween Craft Project: Jack-o'-Lantern Place Mats

Here's a fun and easy craft project that you can make with your kids for Halloween. With a few common craft and household materials, you can decorate your table with these colorful Halloween place mats. This is also a great way to recycle those brown paper bags you get at the grocery store, instead of throwing them away. Your little one's can help with their own safety scissors.

Materials You'll Need

Scissors
Glue or glue sticks
Brown paper bags
Construction paper
Green and black rickrack

Step 1. Making the Place Mats

You will need one large brown paper bag for each place mat. Make sure each paper bag is clean and dry, and free of any stains. Begin by cutting off the bottom of the bag. Next, cut off the seam. Fold the paper bag in half, and trim to the size you want the place mat to be. Next, glue the two sides of the place mat together, and smooth it out flat. When the glue is dry, the place mat is ready to be decorated.

Step 2. Decorating the Place Mats

To decorate the place mats, cut out Jack-o'-lantern shapes using the construction paper. Have your kids draw out the pumpkins with faces on orange construction paper, without the stems on the top. They can then cut out the eyes, nose and mouth. Make several different sizes of Jack-o'-lanterns for each place mat if you like. Next, cut out pumpkin-shaped pieces from sheets of yellow construction paper, one for each of the orange Jack-o'-lantern faces. Don't cut out eyes, nose and mouths on the yellow pumpkins. Make each yellow piece slightly smaller than the orange piece, as these will go underneath the orange paper.

Have the kids arrange the pumpkins on the place mats. Glue down the yellow pumpkins onto the place mat, and then glue the orange Jack-o'-lanterns on top of the yellow pieces (the yellow makes it a "lighted" pumpkin).

Next, cut out a stem for each Jack-o'-lantern with green construction paper, and glue onto the top of each one. Glue on strips of the black and green rick rack around the edges of the place mat. You can alternate the green and black strips, or have the kids pick out their own color. Let the glue dry, and your Halloween place mats are done.

Each child can write their name on their own place mat with a marker. You can also laminate the place mats if you would like to keep them permanently. When they are laminated, they can be wiped off with warm soapy water and reused next Halloween.