Craft Project - Origami Halloween Bats & Bat Cupcakes

http://video.about.com/familycrafts/How-to-Fold-an-Origami-Bat.htm

The above link shows you how to make these adorable origami bats. I suspect you could make them with black construction paper if you didn't have black origami paper (although it will be thicker and probably a little more challenging to fold).  Another idea would be to use a pencil to shade the paper grey for a grey bat.

This would be a great project to help kids work on their dexterity and fine motor skills.  They'd make adorable place holders at the table for a party or hang on a piece of thread and hang up around the house.  You could also use this project to work on fractions, %, whatever math you'd like! ("Fold the paper in HALF. So how much of the paper is folded using %?  How many triangles can we find?  Is the bat symmetrical or asymmetrical? etc.)

Then you could read a few books on bats or research bats online.  Your child can attach/include an origami bat to a lapbook on bats, too (I just LOVE lapbooks!).  I'll definately have to blog about lapbooking sometime, but do a search on it online and you'll find tons of resources!

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Staying with the teme of bats, here's a cute recipe for bat cupcakes I found online, too!

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Bat-Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 package (18-1/4 ounces) chocolate cake mix

1 can (16 ounces) chocolate frosting

24 fudge-striped cookies

24 milk chocolate kisses

Red decorating icing

Directions:

Prepare and bake cake batter according to package directions for cupcakes; cool completely.


Set aside 2 tablespoons chocolate frosting. Frost cupcakes with remaining frosting. For bat wings, cut cookies in half and add scalloped edges if desired. Insert two cookie halves into each cupcake. Gently press chocolate kisses into frosting for heads. Pipe ears with reserved frosting; add eyes with decorating icing. Yield: 2 dozen.