18 Halloween Kids Crafts That Cover Every Age at the Table

Set one long table, lay out the supplies by age group, and let every child work at their own level while the theme holds the whole session together.

The crafts below run from age two to eleven, sorted into four tiers: toddler, preschool, school age and older kids. The last entry belongs to everyone, because it is built from whatever each child made during the session.

A few notes before you start. Toddlers need an adult within arm’s reach for painting steps. School-age kids can cut and punch their own materials. Anything involving scissors, an oven or wire is flagged inside the step that needs it.

Times listed include drying, because that is the part that always surprises people. If you want games to run alongside the making, 25 Not-Too-Scary Halloween Party Games for Kids fits the same age spread.

And if you need to feed everyone afterwards, 21 Halloween Treats Ideas That Cover the Whole Party Table has the spread already planned.

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Handprint Ghost

White paint on black card is one of the sharpest colour contrasts available to a two-year-old, and a handprint turned upside-down reads instantly as a ghost. Fingers become the wispy tail; the palm becomes the round head. Finished pieces look striking pinned to a dark wall or strung on a line with wooden pegs.

Keep the damp cloth within reach before the paint goes on. The most common mistake is letting the paint dry on the hand before wiping, which turns a simple clean-up into a battle. Move fast at the wiping step and you will be fine.

Sponge Print Pumpkin

A pumpkin shape cut from a kitchen sponge gives toddlers a chunky stamp they can grip and reload without help. The finished print has the pleasingly imperfect edges that make a child’s artwork look like a child’s artwork rather than a template.

Layer a few prints across one sheet and you have a scene; keep to one big print centred on the page and you have a piece worth framing.

Cut the sponge into the pumpkin shape yourself before the session starts. An adult should always handle that step. Damp sponges hold paint beautifully; dry ones soak it up and produce patchy results, so give the sponge a quick squeeze under the tap and wring it almost dry before you begin.

Torn Paper Bat

Tearing paper is a legitimate fine-motor skill for toddlers, and wrapping it in a craft session means no one notices they are practicing. The finished bat is charmingly abstract: jagged black shapes on white paper that look like a bat mid-swoop. Glue it to a window for the spooky silhouette effect, or save it flat inside a folder.

The only thing to watch: glue sticks work best on small pieces. If a child tries to glue one enormous sheet of black paper, the glue runs out before the paper is down. Torn pieces roughly 5 to 10 centimetres across are the sweet spot.

Big Sticker Monster

For the youngest children at the table, peeling and pressing is a complete craft. Large foam stickers give toddlers real satisfaction: they are chunky enough to peel independently, they stick firmly first try, and the finished monster face is genuinely funny. No cutting, no paint, no waiting for anything to dry.

Buy a pack with a good mix of shapes: circles for eyes, triangles for teeth, wiggly ones for hair. The child arranges and rearranges before committing, which is half the fun. Display the finished sheet on the fridge or slide it into a clear plastic sleeve as a mini gallery piece.

Paper Plate Spider

Paper plates are the preschool crafter’s best friend: they are already round, they hold paint well, and they are stiff enough to poke pipe cleaners through. This spider ends up looking properly creepy, which is exactly what a four-year-old wants. Hang it from a doorframe on a loop of string and it spins slowly in a draught.

Paint the plate the night before if you want to skip the waiting step at the table.

The legs are the fiddly bit: poke each pipe cleaner through the plate rim from the front, bend the end at the back to hold it, then bend the front half into an L-shape to suggest a bent leg.

Four pipe cleaners, each poked through twice, gives eight legs without cutting anything.

Cardboard Tube Mummy

A toilet roll tube wrapped in gauze bandage looks like a tiny mummy the moment you glue a pair of eyes into a gap in the wrapping. Stand several of them together on a windowsill and they form a small army. They store flat-ish in a cardboard box and survive from one year to the next without any fuss.

Medical gauze from a chemist is perfect and inexpensive. Cut it into strips about 30 centimetres long before the session so preschoolers are not wrestling with a whole roll. The wrapping does not need to be neat. Messy is better. A few loose ends trailing off the bottom looks exactly right.

Cotton Ball Ghost

White cotton balls on black paper produce a ghost with real texture: fluffy, slightly three-dimensional, and nothing like a printed template. The silhouette shape comes from how the child applies the glue, so every ghost is different. Pin a row of them to a dark wall and the effect is genuinely ghostly.

The glue stick is the key tool here and it needs to go on generously. A thin swipe will not hold cotton balls for long. Apply in a solid oval for the head, then extend downward in a narrowing curve for the body. Cotton balls pressed on while the glue is still wet will bond within minutes.

Egg Carton Bats

One egg carton gives you twelve bat bodies and costs nothing. Each cup, once painted black and fitted with paper wings, sits on its own or hangs from a thread. The wings are the part that makes these look polished rather than just painted rubbish, so spend a moment cutting a good wing shape from black paper before the session.

This craft suits preschoolers who can handle a paintbrush but benefit from having the cutting done for them. Let the paint dry completely before gluing wings. Tacky, half-dry paint causes wings to slip off, which is frustrating and avoidable.

Ghost on a Stick

A round cotton pad glued to a craft stick and given a little face is about as quick as a Halloween craft gets, but the result is genuinely cute rather than thrown-together.

Hold one in each hand, wave them about, and a preschooler has a puppet show. They dry in minutes and take up almost no space to store: band a dozen together with an elastic band.

Cotton pads are perfectly round and flat-white, which means zero prep. The marker step is one place to be precise: a very light hand keeps the face from bleeding into the cotton fibres. Test on a spare pad first if the child is using a marker for the first time.

Painted Rock Monsters

Smooth river rocks make the best base because the paint sits on them rather than soaking in. Each child picks one rock and one base colour: neon green, bright purple, electric orange.

The mismatched googly eyes are what make these, so go generous with the pack and let children choose wildly different sizes for each socket. Finished rock monsters live on a windowsill, a bookshelf, or as a doorstop if the rock is large enough.

Acrylic paint dries fast on rock, usually within 20 minutes, but a second coat always looks better than one thick coat that cracks. A paint pen is the neatest tool for adding details like teeth, claws or spots. Rocks with a flat base sit without wobbling; test yours before painting.

Paper Bat Mobile

Black card bats in three different sizes hanging at different heights from a coat hanger make a mobile that looks properly designed rather than just strung up.

The size variation is what does the work: small, medium and large bats on the same hanger read as a little family mid-flight. Hang it in a window or from a curtain rod where it can turn slowly.

A bat template on scrap paper is worth making once and tracing around multiple times. The school-age children can handle their own cutting with scissors; the adult handles anything involving the coat hanger hook end. Tie the strings at different lengths before attaching to the hanger, and balance as you go by spacing them evenly.

Yarn Spider Web Plate

Weaving yarn across a punched paper plate produces a spider web that actually looks like a web, not a mess of string, because the plate rim holds everything taut.

The plastic spider sitting in the centre is the finishing touch that makes every child at the table jealous they did not make one.

Hang it on a door or prop it against a wall as a seasonal decoration that will last the whole of October.

The hole punch is the key tool and the one step that needs a certain amount of hand strength. School-age kids from about seven upward can usually manage it; younger ones may need an adult to punch the holes in advance. Weaving is entirely within a six-year-old’s ability once the holes are ready.

Haunted House Floor Plan

This is the craft that quietly keeps a school-age child occupied for a very long time.

Give them a large sheet of card, a ruler and a set of markers, and ask them to design the floor plan of a haunted house: every room named and populated with whatever horror they choose.

It reads as architecture and as storytelling at the same time, which is why it suits children who are past purely tactile making but still love drawing.

There is no wrong way to do it. Some children rule a neat grid; others draw sprawling asymmetric rooms that spread across the sheet. The labelling step is where older kids show off their handwriting, and where younger school-age children find the challenge. Display it pinned to the wall or rolled up and stored in a cardboard tube.

Papier Mache Pumpkin

This is the slow-burn craft for older children who can manage a multi-session project. The balloon sets the shape with zero effort; the papier mache strips build up a rigid shell.

Painted orange with a green stem, the finished pumpkin looks three-dimensional and genuinely impressive on a mantelpiece. It will last several years if stored in a box with a little tissue paper for padding.

Flour paste is simply plain flour stirred into water until it is the thickness of single cream. Mix it fresh each session; it will sour if left overnight. The drying time is the long part: each layer needs at least two hours, and three layers is the minimum for a shell firm enough to survive the balloon being popped.

Four Panel Ghost Comic

A blank sheet of paper becomes a four-panel comic about a ghost, and the older child runs the whole project from story idea to inked final. The pencil-then-ink method is the one professional cartoonists actually use: plan without commitment first, commit with ink second.

The finished strip looks polished and is worth keeping flat in a clear plastic sleeve or scanning as a keepsake.

The fiddly part is keeping the panel borders straight without using a full set square. A ruler and a steady hand are enough. The best strips are usually the ones with the least text: two or three words per panel and one clear action in the drawing. Encourage restraint.

Salt Dough Skulls

Salt dough is one of the most satisfying materials for older children because it behaves like real clay but costs almost nothing. A skull cutter gives a crisp silhouette, and once baked the result is rock-hard and paintable.

Finished skulls make table decorations, gift tags or chunky hanging ornaments with a loop of twine through a hole made before baking. They will last for years in a dry box.

The recipe is strictly one cup of plain flour to half a cup of table salt to half a cup of water. Too much water makes the dough sticky and the baked result puffs and cracks. Roll to about 5 mm thickness for a skull that is sturdy without taking forever to bake.

Pipe Cleaner Spiders

Four black pipe cleaners twisted together at the centre and splayed into eight legs, then topped with a pom-pom body and two googly eyes: this is the craft that takes twelve minutes and produces something that genuinely looks like a spider rather than a craft project.

The legs can be bent into positions: crouching, rearing up, mid-scuttle. Display a cluster of them on a bookshelf or drop them into a bowl of sweets at the front door.

The only technique that matters here is the central twist. Take all four pipe cleaners and twist them together at their exact midpoints, two full rotations, so the twist is tight and the legs splay symmetrically. A loose twist and the whole spider falls apart when you try to pose the legs.

Family Collage Poster

This one belongs to the whole table. Every child contributes one element cut or torn from whatever they made during the session: a ghost handprint, a spare bat wing, a square of salt dough packaging, a test panel from the comic strip.

Glued onto one large poster sheet, the result is a record of the afternoon that is more interesting than any single craft on its own.

Lay the poster flat in the centre of the table and let each child choose where their piece goes. The arrangement does not need to be neat.

Write the year in large block letters across the top in marker before anyone adds their piece, so the lettering sits behind everything else as a banner.

For links to everything you might want alongside the crafts, 16 Halloween Games and Activities for Kids runs on the same age spread, and 20 Halloween Arts and Crafts to Fill a Whole October gives you the next four Saturdays already planned.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the easiest Halloween craft for toddlers?

The Big Sticker Monster requires no paint and no drying time: a toddler peels large foam stickers and presses them onto card to build a monster face. It suits children from age two upward and takes about ten minutes from start to finish.

Which of these Halloween kids crafts can siblings of different ages do at the same table?

All eighteen crafts in this collection share a Halloween theme but are sorted by age tier, so a toddler can do a handprint ghost while a seven-year-old weaves a yarn spider web plate and a ten-year-old draws a four-panel comic. The Family Collage Poster at the end brings every age together into one shared piece.

How do you make salt dough skulls at home?

Mix one cup of plain flour with half a cup of table salt, then add half a cup of water a little at a time until a firm dough forms.

Roll to 5 mm thickness, cut with a skull-shaped cookie cutter and bake at 100 degrees Celsius fan for two to two and a half hours until rock hard. An adult must handle the oven step.

Once cool, paint white with acrylic paint and add black details.

What Halloween crafts are good for a group of mixed ages?

Set up one long table with supplies sorted by tier. Toddlers work on handprint ghosts and sticker monsters. Preschoolers make paper plate spiders and cardboard tube mummies. School-age children cut bat mobiles and weave spider web plates. Older children build papier mache pumpkins or draw ghost comics. At the end, everyone contributes one piece to the shared Family Collage Poster.

How do you make a papier mache pumpkin with kids?

Inflate a round balloon to about 20 cm across and rest it in a bowl. Tear newspaper into strips, dip each in flour paste (three tablespoons of plain flour stirred into 250 ml of warm water) and layer over the balloon.

Apply three layers, drying for two hours between each. Once the shell is firm, pop the balloon, remove it from the base hole, and paint the shell orange with acrylic paint. Add a green stem at the top. This suits children aged nine and older.