🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• 👁️ Hand-Eye Coordination — Guiding scissors along a line, placing stickers exactly, and painting within a space all require the visual-motor integration that handwriting, sports, and detailed work depend on.
• 📋 Planning & Sequencing — Multi-step craft projects require children to think about what comes first, next, and last — building the procedural sequencing skills that underlie reading comprehension, mathematics, and everyday problem solving.
• 💪 Persistence & Resilience — Working through a craft that doesn't go as planned, fixing mistakes, and persisting to completion teaches children that effort — not talent — produces results, a mindset that predicts lifelong learning.
• 🌿 Sensory Exploration — Handling varied craft materials — soft fabric, rough sandpaper, smooth clay, scratchy burlap — builds sensory discrimination and supports the processing skills that some children need additional practice with.

The Floating Ghost Preschool Halloween Craft requires some parental help, however, there are steps that your preschooler can do themselves. When you are finished making this Halloween craft, your floating ghosts will be a very good centerpiece for your Halloween window display.

Materials You Will Need

One large round white balloon
One 72-inch square piece of very light, white, translucent, shimmering fabric
Black marking pen
Fishing line or other strong, thin string
Large Paperclips
One sewing needle
Two 2-inch white buttons
White yarn
Yardstick
Tailor chalk or white chalk
Two ceiling hooks (if you want to put it in your window)

Step 1:
Install the ceiling hooks in the ceiling above your window. The first two hooks should be about three inches from the wall and about three feet apart. This is where the ghosts arms will hang from. The center hook should be centered between these two, but about 18 inches further away from the wall, more or less, depending on how much you want your ghost’s arms extend. There will be about 3 to 3 ½ feet of fabric between the head and the hand and each hand. The distance from the center hook to each end hook should not be much more than that, though the fishing line will give you some leeway.

Step 2:
Lay out the fabric on a large surface like a table or the floor. Measure from the top to bottom and side to side to find the center if the cloth. Mark the center.

Step 3:
Cut three pieces of fishing line about four feet long. Coil each one as you cut it and secure it with a paperclip to keep it from unraveling.

Step 4:
Place the balloon, opening down in a coffee can or some other container to keep it still. Lay the fabric over the top and center the center mark in the center of the top of the balloon. Determine where the lower part of the back of the head will be and mark it.

Step 5:
Using one of the coils of fishing line, make several stitches to secure the line, leaving the rest of the line on the outside of the fabric. This will be what you hang the ghosts head from.

Step 6:
Directly opposite the center mark, sew one of the buttons securely about a foot from the edge, again leaving the end long portion of the line on the outside to hang it from. Do the same on the opposite side. These will be the ghost’s hands. When you hang the ghost, the fabric will resemble a caftan with the sides open.

Step 7:
Tie the yarn around the fabric at the bottom of the balloon. This will be the ghost’s neck. Have your preschooler draw the face on the ghost with a marker.

Step 8:
Take the ghost to the window. Uncoil the center fishing line and wrap it one or two times around the center hook to be sure this is the height you want the ghost to be. When you have adjusted it to the height you want to be, wrap the fishing line around the hook several times to secure it and tie it off.

Step 9:
In a similar way that you hung the ghost’s head, tie the fishing line attached to the ghost’s arms to the other two hooks. Be sure that the arms are the height you want before you tie it off.

You can also hang the floating ghost outside in either the Haunted Tree Preschool Halloween Display or the Scarecrow and Company Porch Preschool Halloween Display.