For Día de Los Muertos, my daughter and I tried a couple of crafts. Below are some cute ideas I found to be kid-friendly and mom-friendly!
Calavera Balloon
The calavera balloon craft ended up being a no brainer! If your kid is like mine, they’ll love being able to take a balloon and drawing on it. For the paper stand, I’d recommend printing it on 11” x 14” paper. That way, depending on the balloon size your kiddos prefer, you can easily trim and tape it in the back. If you don’t have 11” x 14” paper easily accessible, that’s okay. I printed on 8.5” x 11” because that’s what we had. My daughter just taped an extra strip of paper in the back.
What took the most time was creating the paper stand (mouth of the calavera) for the balloon to sit on. You’re in luck because I already did the work! If you sign-up for our Fiesta Kits USA e-newsletter, you’ll receive our free template for the mouth that's pictured in this post.
We really liked this craft because it's simple yet allows for so much creativity! There’s also enough room in the mouth area of the paper stand to personalize and add your own designs, glitter, or rhinestones.
Papel Picado
For the papel picado banner, stencils saved the day! We used stencils to add shapes that can be folded in half and cut to make it easier for small hands. The fun part was drawing the shapes. For this craft, I recommend using child-friendly scissors and making sure you’re supervising as the tissue runs thin. To make things easier, we used pre-cut tissue squares (4” x 4”), but you can use any tissue sheets you have and cut the squares to the size of your liking. Another option would be craft paper or construction paper for something sturdier. We used paper raffia ribbon because it was easier to glue the tissue squares and not have to worry about threading twine through the paper.
Cempasúchil Flowers
We made a paper tissue flower to represent the cempasúchil flower. These were pretty simple to make and really bring the whole altar vibe together. For the paper flowers, we cut a 15” x 20’ tissue sheet, so it made two 15” x 10” sheets. We put the sheets together and made 1” folds on both ends to have rounded edges. We secured the tissue paper with the green pipe cleaner, then fluffed out the tissue.
Taking the time to do these crafts was an excellent opportunity to answer any questions my daughter had about why we celebrate Día de Los Muertos and what everything means on the altar. I hope you have as much fun as we did!
Abrazos,
Jess