Positive Negative Halloween

My class had a blast making these positive negative jack o’ lanterns for our Halloween art project.

These are pretty easy to make if you want simple jack o’lanterns but become a little more complicated the more detailed it is.

To make these students get a full sheet of black construction paper and half a piece of orange. 

I have students LIGHTLY draw half of a jack o’ lantern on the orange sheet. Then they start cutting. This is the tricky part. They have to keep everything they cut out. 

What ever they cut out of the orange gets flipped over and glued onto the black to create a mirror image.

To get more detailed jack o’lanterns I let my students use small exacto knives/ scalpels to cut out the details. Don’t worry, we went over A LOT of safety rules first and students cut with the knives at the table with me. We also used hole punches for the small circles. 

 Some of my students were not fully understanding how it was to work until they started placing their orange pieces on the black and then they could see their jack o’lantern coming to life.

When they are all done put them on a bulletin board for all to see. I chose a purple background because I felt it really made the art pop.

Here is a close up of my border made from duct tape !!! I love duct tape and when I saw this spider tape I knew I had to have it. To make this border I first stapled up the black scalloped trim and then taped over it with the duct tape. The only tragedy was that I could not keep the black trim because the tape didn’t come off it easily. It was worth it though. I received a lot of comments on it and the kids loved the spiders.

To fill in some of the empty spaces on the bulletin board I taped on  spider window clings that I had.

I thought I would throw in this picture because it was one of the coolest treats I have ever seen. Our class had a Halloween party and this is what one student brought. His mom made a jello brain. It had some sort of liquid candy blood and the kids went crazy for it.

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays to celebrate with my students. I love how creative they can get this time of year. 

Cheers,