Halloween Countdown Calendar

Create a fun Halloween countdown calendar for kids.

I made an advent calendar for Christmas several years ago and my kids enjoyed it so much that I decided to make one for Halloween as well. The Christmas calendar was made of fabric with felt pieces. This Halloween one was much simpler to create because it’s all made of paper! Designing and cutting out all the shapes was very time consuming, but I love the end result and it has help up surprisingly well over the last three or four years that we’ve used it.

The base of this project was a magnetic white board that I got at a yard sale for 75 cents. 

Originally the background was all the striped paper. When I had to redo it, I decided to make squares so that there was a space for each day (which works much better). And since you cannot possibly make 31 squares come out evenly, I only did 30. The kids will have to deal with it. LOL.

I cut up a bunch of coordinating paper, glued it to white butcher paper, then sewed zig-zag lines on all the seams to make it look like a quilt. And I kept the original ghost ric-rac. It was just too cute to leave off!

We use the can to store the pieces before they are put on the board. It’s just a re-purposed food can covered in paper. 

This is one of those projects that just makes me smile whenever I pull it out of the Fall decoration box. My kids love it too. It was totally worth the time it took to make all the little shapes. But if that is way too intimidating for you, you could totally print Halloween clip art onto cardstock and laminate it. Way easier, but still fun.

*** UPDATE: This project would be so much easier to make now that I own a Silhouette Cameo machine. I cut every one of those designs by hand back in the day, but if I were to make it today, I’d just buy a bunch of cute cut files and make them out of paper. Much easier!