This spooky holiday is a great opportunity for teachers to introduce art projects that not only celebrate the season but also encourage students to express their creativity and try new skills.
Middle school is a time when students can develop their artistic skills and own personal style, making it a good chance to incorporate Halloween art projects into their curriculum.
But what are some of the best Halloween art projects for middle school students? If you’re wondering about this, then you’ve arrived at the right article.
We’ve compiled a list of the 7 best middle school Halloween art projects you can try in your next lesson.
We’ve also included some additional information about how to incorporate these projects into your classroom.
What Makes A Good Halloween Art Project?
An effective Halloween art project should be both fun and challenging for students. It should allow them to explore their creativity while also teaching them new techniques and skills.
It should also be appropriate for the age group, meaning that it should be easy enough for them to understand and complete, but also challenging enough to keep them engaged.
Lastly, it should be able to incorporate the spooky and eerie atmosphere of Halloween, or perhaps link to the history of the season.
Halloween is a fairly inclusive holiday and as a result, you can use it as a way to teach all manner of different subjects.
Halloween has a long history with many different versions of celebrations, especially when it comes to different geographical locations.
You should make sure that the project links to the spirit/history of the season.
The 7 Best Middle School Halloween Art Projects
1. Halloween Masks
First up, we have a fun art project that can really allow students to express their creativity. Students can create spooky and imaginative masks using paper mache, cardboard, or clay.
They can then paint and decorate them with Halloween themes like pumpkins, ghosts, and witches. This is perfect for an art classroom where you will have all of the materials and equipment required to create dynamic masks.
2. Haunted House Drawing
Students can create a haunted house drawing using pencils, charcoal, or pastels. They can use different shading techniques to create a spooky and eerie atmosphere.
This can be a great choice for teaching other important art techniques, and can easily be incorporated into a lesson plan involving landscape and/or architectural drawings.
If limiting this project to only haunted houses seems too restrictive, you can also give students the option to draw graveyards, streets on Halloween night, and anything else that is associated with the holiday.
3. Halloween Collages
Collaging is a classic art technique that has been used for much of the 20th and 21st century as a way of expressing emotion and important social issues.
Halloween is a great time to show students the basics of collage artwork. Students can create Halloween-themed collages using cutouts from magazines or newspapers.
They can focus on specific Halloween themes like bats, spiders, skeletons, witches, or Jack-o’-lanterns.
4. Creating Halloween Lanterns
Jack-o’-lanterns are decorative Halloween lanterns created by carving out pumpkins, turnips, or other types of materials.
The name is derived from an old Irish folk story about a man who tricked the devil. This is one of the traditional aspects of Halloween, and a creative art project by default.
Using pumpkins can be a messy and difficult process, but students can instead create lanterns using paper, glue, and markers.
They can decorate them with Halloween themes and hang them up to create a spooky ambiance. It can be a great way for them to decorate the classroom to commemorate the season!
5. Spooky Silhouettes
A silhouette is a type of artwork where the image or front-subject (this could also be a scene) is depicted in a solid black color,usually against a much lighter background.
This simple but effective technique has been used to create striking pieces of artwork, and works perfectly for Halloween.
To start this project, you should get students to create spooky silhouettes using black paper and scissors.
They can then cut out different shapes to resemble Halloween monsters/creatures, and stick them on white paper to create a striking contrast.
6. Ghostly Portraits
Portraiture is another pillar of art that sits as an important thing for students to learn during middle school.
Thankfully, there are lots of ways to incorporate the Halloween season into this field of artwork. Students can create ghostly portraits using acrylic paint and canvas.
They can use different brush techniques to create a ghostly and eerie effect. You could also base these on human stories of ghosts, and incorporate real ghost stories into your lesson plans to engage your students.
7. Halloween Dioramas
A diorama is a three-dimensional model, or display, that depicts a specific scene.
Dioramas are often set as a project for students to create historical events, ecosystems, or something else that requires three dimensions to properly explore.
In this lesson idea, students should create Halloween dioramas using shoeboxes, clay, and other materials.
They can create a spooky scene, like a haunted house or graveyard, and decorate it with Halloween themes. You can really allow your students’ imaginations to run wild with this one.
The only real difficulty with dioramas is the amount of time and materials they take to create, so you may want to spread this one over a longer period of time for great project results.
Tips For Teaching Halloween Art Projects
1. Provide Clear Instructions
It is very important that students get a comprehensive idea of what the assignment is. Make sure you give clear instructions that will avoid any confusion.
Also, make sure you are open to any questions so that students will be comfortable with expanding their skills and understanding of the material/artistic technique you are exploring.
2. Demonstrate Techniques
Make sure that you demonstrate the skills and techniques required to create the project in question. You could do this with a demonstration that takes students through each step of the process.
3. Provide Feedback
Consistently give your students feedback as they work through their project, providing helpful advice and encouraging them to improve.
Positivity is the key here, so make sure you keep a positive attitude, even when students are struggling.
4. Encourage Creativity
Art projects like this are all about creativity, so make sure you allow students to express themselves.
This doesn’t mean allowing them to completely take a left turn with the project you have assigned, but any extension of the technique or topic should be encouraged.
5. Exercise Patience
Art projects can be time-consuming and difficult, so make sure you allow your students ample time and space to complete their projects.
Make sure you give a clear time frame for how long the project should take, and how much lesson time you have to focus on it.
This will allow your students to exercise time management skills and plan ahead for what they want to make.
Final Thoughts
Halloween is an excellent opportunity to incorporate art projects into your middle school curriculum.
The 8 projects mentioned above are just a few examples of the many creative and fun projects that you can introduce to your students.
Remember to provide clear instructions, demonstrate techniques, provide feedback, encourage creativity, and be patient. We hope that this article has given you some ideas for art projects that revolve around the Halloween season.
If you still have some questions on this topic, make sure to keep reading for our short FAQ section below. We hope you and your students have a great time and that they create some incredible pieces from this idea!
Frequently Asked Questions
What Materials Can I Use For Halloween Art Projects?
Materials like paper, paint, clay, charcoal, and markers are commonly used for Halloween art projects.
However, you can also use more conservative art implements like pencils for sketching, or fine liner pens. You can really use anything in your classroom that you’d usually pick in a lesson.
How Long Should A Halloween Art Project Take?
The length of time it takes to complete a Halloween art project can vary.
It’s important to give your students enough time to complete the project without rushing them, but also make them aware that they will only have a specific amount of time to complete the project, as Halloween only takes place within October.
How Can I Incorporate Halloween Art Projects Into My Curriculum?
Halloween art projects can be incorporated into your curriculum by tying them to historical lessons, or lessons about holidays and why they are celebrated across the world.
You can use presentations or worksheets to create additional context around the project you’re looking to create. For example, Jack-o’-Lanterns can be linked to the original story that has inspired them, and the time period that inspired the story.
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
