Wooden Spoon Bat Craft for Halloween

Have you ever been in the same room with a bat before? I have. It’s not exactly ideal. I mean, there’s kind of an expectation that if you’re in a house, anything that flies is going to stay outside. Don’t you think? You just don’t expect to find bats inside your house, so when they show up, it’s enough to make your heart jump right out of your chest.

When I was growing up, we lived in a big, beautiful house in the country – my parents still live there and catch bats inside their house more often than I’d like to know. My parents even keep a butterfly net in their bedroom so they can catch the bats. When you live in the country, there’s just not much you can do about it! They swear bats are nice and that it’s not a big deal… Whatever. haha

Sometimes my parents will hear them flying around at night and they’ll have to get out of bed and go on a bat hunt – apparently the bat’s radar doesn’t sense the butterfly net so they’re fairly easy to catch and release outside (so my parents say…). Picture my parents in their jammies, jumping out of bed, running around their bedroom with a butterfly net trying to catch the bat, going outside to release it, then crawling back into bed for a cozy night’s sleep. I’m cringing just thinking about it. Sweet dreams on those nights! lol

If you’re going to be dealing with bats, I highly recommend the pretend kind, like these wooden spoon bats that you make yourself. Anything you make yourself is awesome. And way less scary! And hey, you can even make them cute!

This wooden spoon bat craft is such a fun project for Halloween. You can make them in less than half an hour, and even with the painting, the mess isn’t that bad as long as you work on a foil lined baking sheet. The kids can make the bat wings flap while they fly the bats through the air. Or you could even hang them on the wall as a fun Halloween decoration.

Wooden Spoon Bat Craft for Halloween

Here’s what you’ll need. The affiliate links below will take you to products on Amazon that are similar to the ones I used for this craft:

• Wooden Spoons


• Black construction paper


• Scrap of white paper


• 2 googly eyes (7mm size)


• Crafter’s tape 


• Paint and paintbrush

I used wooden ice cream spoons that I ordered from Amazon when I made the Sherlock Gnomes Wooden Spoon Puppets earlier this year. They are the shorter 4″ long tea spoons, not the full size 6″ spoons.

If you order your spoons online, make sure you double check the size. I accidentally ordered these short ones by accident earlier this year, so I’m happy I finally found a fun craft to use them on!

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and squeeze a small amount of acrylic paint onto a paper plate – This is totally optional, but I find it really helps keep messes to a minimum!

Carefully paint the back side and edges of the spoon. I didn’t bother painting the front of the spoon since you won’t be able to see it.

Add more paint to the plate and paint more colours if you like. I love how fun all the bright colours look together when all the spoons are painted a different colour!

Then set the spoons out to dry on the aluminum foil. I only did one coat, and it only took about 15 minutes for them to dry. By the time I was done cutting out my bat wings, the spoons were dry enough to work with.

While you’re waiting for your spoons to dry, cut out your bat wings from black construction paper.

Fold the construction paper in half, draw a bat wing shape, then cut out the wings along the fold so they’re symmetrical.

You can print out my printable bat wing template to trace if you like. Just click the image below (or click here) and print the pdf on standard printer paper. Just make sure your printer is set to print the sheet at 100% size.

Once the spoons are completely dry, cut out two small black triangle ears from the construction paper and two small triangle fangs from the white printer paper. Attach them using crafter’s glue dot tape (the link is in the list of materials above). I find that the glue dot tape is a little easier to work with than standard crafter’s tape for small pieces like these.

Attach the googly eyes to the spoon using crafter’s glue dot tape.

Add a line of crafter’s glue dot tape to the inside fold of the bat wings.

Then carefully line up the spoon over top and press it onto the crafter’s tape.

Gently fold the bat wings up over the each side of the spoon

When you let go of the fold, the wings should be bending slightly up off the table. Just enough so that your bat isn’t completely flat.

Then repeat the steps for the rest of your bats!

Bats kind of creep me out, so I was trying to keep these guys cute and fun.

You can make your bats whatever colours you like! I tried making my first bat black, but I didn’t quite like it. It was very dark and creepy looking. But hey, it’s Halloween, so creepy might be exactly what you’re going for!

My kids thought these wooden spoon bats were awesome. They were excited to play with the bats and make their wings flap as they flew them through the air.

This wooden spoon bat craft for Halloween is so much fun! It’s quick and simple, and super fun to make with the kids! You could even hang them on the wall as a Halloween decoration!

If you’re looking for more awesome Halloween crafts, check out our tutorial for making yarn pumpkins.

For more low mess craft ideas, be sure to check out our new book, Low-Mess Crafts for Kids. Available wherever books are sold!

Source : onelittleproject.com
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