Ugh. One very sick monster decided to visit our house last night, passing by everyone else and gifting his goo to me and me alone. It is remarkable how unwell a person can feel in the span of a couple of hours. So, here I am at 8:30 a.m. still making my way through the daily post. Then it’s lights out for me:)

Thanks to everybody who jumped in over on the Forum with awesome Halloween crafting ideas. It’s amazing what everyone has in their craft cupboard.

As I seem to be unable to stop repeating, the tiny person is obsessed with all things spooky this year, and bats are DEFINITELY in the top 5 coolest spookiness out there for her.

So, we’ve gone a bit batty, and turned it into a bit of a lesson in creatures of the night – which we’ll get into in Thursday’s Nature Journal post. You’d be amazed at how many cool books and educational projects there are in the batty universe.

The tiny person was all for making another batty craft (we made 3D bats way back when all of this spooky madness started). But, there was one requirement, it had to move.

Apparently, it wasn’t enough for them to just hang there. If they couldn’t fly, they were not on the list.

So we had some extra Halloweeny brads, I found a bat pattern on Kidzone.ws and we were off to the races.

Here’s what you need:

- Black, purple or gray paper (actually, any colour will do)
– a pencil for tracing
– scissors
– a hole punch
– brads to hold it all together
– string

Directions:

1. Find a bat pattern with wings and a body separate from each other, or hand trace, cut it out and punch two holes in the top of each wing as well as on both shoulders of the bat body. You can also punch a hole in the bottom of the bat to hang it with. Attach together with brads.

2. Cut a piece of string at least 12 inches long and thread it through the back (see photo) so that, when you pull down on it, the bat wings move. You may have to tighten or loosen the brads to give the right tension on the wings so they actually move, or don’t just hang there.

3. We left ours plain. But, I totally recommend decorating them with all kinds of fun, giving them some jiggly eyes and bringing them to life. The tiny person said ours were more spooky without decorations and, well, I concede my crafty need to embellish to her love of Halloween.

I would love to say I’m off to find a comfy slab of couch on which to sleep this yuck off. But, I mistakenly pulled out the Winter holiday craft books the other day and the tiny person is tugging at my pant leg to start Winter-izing the house.

At least it doesn’t require me to get out of my pjs:)

Have a great day!