Maker Monday: 3 favorite fall projects
We love fall! The autumn season of harvest, Halloween and pumpkins gives us lots of opportunities for creative fun. Here are our favorite fall Maker Monday projects:
1. Not-So-Spooky Night Lights
The glowing faces of Not-So-Spooky Night Lights can add a bedtime smile with this week’s Maker Monday activity.
The kid-designed project begins with a small empty jar. Baby food jars work well, but we preferred going with plastic containers. Add a colorful decoupage layer of tissue paper, then let creativity rule the day.
Accessorize your creatures with features cut from construction paper. Googly eyes give a silly touch to a gruesome face. Make a spider night light with pipe cleaner legs. Add a witch’s hat or Dracula’s fangs. Use white tissue for a glowing ghost or orange tissue to make a bright jack-o-lantern.
The Not-So-Spooky Night Lights are inexpensive to make. We found everything we needed at the Dollar Tree store.
Find instructions here.
2. Sew-It-Yourself Spider Web
Halloween season means fun with spooky, creepy creatures. This week’s Maker Monday STEAM project gives a playful look to Sew-It-Yourself Spiders made with yarn and paper plates.
Little kids can exercise their fine motor skills by sewing the yarn through holes and weaving a web for their spider. They can make it in Halloween colors of orange and black or experiment with other colors for a more fanciful, artistic vision.
Get the details here.
3. Coffee Filter Leaves
Maker Monday straddles the line between nature and art with Coffee Filter Leaves, an activity that offers STEM lessons. Enjoy sunny fall days with a stroll through your favorite park or just explore your own backyard. Find a variety of leaves in different shapes and colors.
When you find interesting leaves, look up and try to find the tree from which it came. Are there nuts — like acorns or buckeyes — among the branches? Or fruit, such as apples? How might you describe the bark? How wide or tall does the tree appear? Are the branches reaching to the sky or bent willy-nilly?
Use a printable chart to identify the tree by its leaves. Then, make bright leaves of your own. Here’s how.
For more Maker Monday projects and other fun stuff for kids, visit the Kidsburgh Activities page.
