One of my favorite Halloween crafts is lunch bag jack o’ lanterns.  It’s a little messy, but never mind that!  I’ve done this activity with preschoolers through 5th graders with equal success.  It’s one of those great projects that adjusts itself to individual abilities.  Here’s how to do it:

• Lightly stuff a brown lunch bag with newspaper, or recycling paper.
• Gather the top of the bag together, scrunching and twisting a couple of inches to form the stem.
• Tie a piece of green roving, yarn, twine, or ribbon at the base of the stem to close the pumpkin.
• Paint the entire “pumpkin” with orange tempera paint using a small piece of sponge on a clothes pin.  I like to put out a little yellow and tan tempera, too, and let the children experiment with mixing the colors.  It gives more depth, but also runs the risk of looking a little less like a pumpkin.

Set the pumpkins around the room until Halloween.

On Halloween, the students cut out figures for the face of the jack o’ lantern from construction paper scraps, and glue or paste them on.  Then they are ready to send home for an evening of scary fun!