Halloween Process-Art and Child-Led Learning

As a Reggio-inspired teacher, I have always been a proponent of open-ended art and allowing children to explore materials in their own way. When I taught art classes to young children, I would sometimes skip holiday art completely because I wasn’t sure how to incorporate a holiday theme into process-orientated art.

Over the years I have experimented with holiday crafts that are somewhat open-ended and teach important art techniques. Some of my favorite Halloween projects have been spiderweb printmaking and lanterns with tissue decoupage.

Focusing On Process Over Product

This year, I decided to focus on setting up Halloween-inspired “Invitations to Create.” Rather than set out general Halloween props and materials, I thought about what my girls are interested in at the moment. And then it came to me… bats!

They each have their own special bat toy that they play with every day, so I set them out on the table and began collecting some art materials to display alongside them.

While I was setting up this Invitation to Create, Karuna (age 7) came into the studio and asked what I was doing. When I told her, she started brainstorming things that she wanted to make for her bat and suddenly said, “A bat habitat!”

Karuna began listing off things we would need, like cardboard boxes and a glue gun (affiliate link). As I took instructions from Karuna, she and Ora (age 3) dug through the baskets of recycled goodies and collected materials for the project. Ora picked up an old CD and said, “this can be the rug!”

What started off as a holiday-inspired Invitation to Create, turned into a wonderful child-led learning opportunity that extends well beyond the holiday of Halloween. This was the first time Ora has used a glue gun by herself. She would have worked with that thing forever, but we eventually ran out of glue!

When the girls were finished working on their bat habitats, they immediately ran off to play with them. There’s something special about art projects that overlap with pretend play. It really get’s their creative juices going!

What type of art do you love to do around Halloween or other holidays? Do you tend to do more crafts or process-art? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.