Well it's that time of year again! I can't believe the summer has flown by this fast and it's time to start thinking about Halloween and fall decorations. Pretty soon we'll have to start thinking about Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Why is it that every year seems to go faster than the previous one? It's crazy! Anyway, I know it can be difficult to constantly come up with new ideas for classroom decorations especially for all of the different seasons and holidays. So to help you out I'm going to tell you about some pretty neat ideas you can do with your class for this coming Halloween.

There are literally thousands of different things you can do to decorate your classroom. You can do more of just a fall theme or you can decorate specifically for Halloween. If you choose to decorate for Halloween you can choose to go the scary route and make all kinds of creapy, scary things to put around the classroom, or you can go the friendly route with friendly looking ghosts, witches, and mummies. If you are interested in making your classroom look like it came straight out of a horror movie than this article is not for you! I'm going to give some unique ideas about how to decorate your classroom specifically for halloween in a fun, kid friendly way.

To start with I am going to give you a really cool idea for how to decorate your classroom door since that is the first thing people see. What's neat about this particular decoration is that it can be used for a variety of different age groups and serve as a learning tool.

The overall decoration is going to be a skeleton made from construction paper. The items you will need to creat the skeleton are:

• construction paper (white and black)
• stencils (optional)
  
• pencils
• scissors
• brass fasteners
• tape

The first thing you have to decide is how big you want your skeleton to be. You also need to think about what age group you are doing this with. If older children are going to be helping you with this you can actually make the bones look like bones and teach the children about all of the bones that make up the human body. If you are doing this with younger children I recommend making each bone a shape that resembles the actual shape of the bone. You can use circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles, etc. and teach the children about all of the different shapes as you create the skeleton.

Once you have decided on the size of the skeleton and what the pieces are going to look like it's time to start sketching everything out. If you think it would be easier for you to use stencils to trace all of the different pieces you can do that. After you have drawn or traced all of the pieces you can cut out each one. To attach all of the different pieces I like the idea of using the brass fasteners so you can put the skeleton in whatever position you choose. If you would rather just tape the whole thing together you can do that to. Once the skeleton is all put together from head to toe cut out black construction paper to the appropriate size to attach the skeleton to. If you don't have large enough sheets of construction paper for that you can either tape some together or use a large sheet of black bulletin board paper. Finally, all you have to do is attach the skeleton to black paper and hang it on the door!

If you want to add a little bit more to your door decorations you can put cotton up in the corners of the doorway to look like spiderwebs and put some plastic spiders in them.

Now that the door decorations are done I'm going to give you a couple of ideas for crafts children can do that can be hung around the classroom. The first one is really simple. All you are going to do is cut out fairly good sized bats from brown construction paper and then have the children decorate them. They can draw faces on them, add some color, or you could have them make a list on the body of the bats of all the things they know about bats. After they are finished decorating them or making their list you can hang the bats from the ceiling.

For the next little project you are going to need a large space on a wall or a bulletin board. First you are going to hang a large piece of orange bulletin paper (or any other fall color) on the wall or the bulletin board. Next you are going to cut out letters that spell 'Spiders' in a color that will go with the background you chose. Once the letters are cut out just paste or tape them in the middle of the bulletin board paper. After that you are going to make a spider out of black construction paper to either hang above or below the word 'Spiders'. I usually just do a smaller circle for the head and a larger one for the body. For the legs I like to cut out rectangles, fold them like an accordion, and then unfold them so that when I hang them they are more three dimensional instead of flat against the wall.

After you get the spider put together and hung on the bulletin board paper it's time to teach the children about spiders by reading them a short story or something along those lines. When you are finished reading the story have students write things they learned about spiders on the bulletin board paper.

Hopefully those few little ideas will help you decorate your classroom this Halloween. Feel free to tweak any of the ideas or add some of your own. If you are having a Halloween party where the children are dressing up you should definitely take pictures of them and hang them around the classroom. If you are looking for more classroom decorations or ideas you can click on the link below.

Classroom Decorations