• Help children create spooky and educational mummy crafts.Egyptian farao image by kaleff from Fotolia.com
  
  Spooky stories and scary images often fascinate children. Halloween, especially, prompts kids to find frightening costumes and put up spooky decorations. One of the most popular Halloween figures is the mummy. Often a zombie figure in popular culture, children find them quite spooky. Mummies, however, aren't just for Halloween. Some children love mummies because of the historical lore surrounding them. They are fascinated with how and why the ancient Egyptians made mummies. Encourage your child's love of Halloween and history with mummy craft projects.
  
  

Mummy Snack Jar

• These creative candy jars, as seen on AmazingMoms.com, are a practical way to decorate with your Halloween candy. You and your child can fill glass jars with candy corn, multicolored gum drops and whatever other loose or hard candy you have on hand. Chocolate candies don't work as well because they tend to melt, stick together or go stale. Each jar should be filled to the top and closed tightly with a screw-top lid.
  
  Have your child either paint or glue eyes to the front of the jar and wrap it up in cheesecloth or gauze afterward. The finished jar should have a little "window" between the layers of cloth so you can see the eyes and some of the candy color. Make large jars of candy and leave them open for trick-or-treaters to take candy from or make many of them from baby food jars as Halloween party favors. Be creative; glue plastic spiders to the gauze or stuff straw under the cloth above the eyes for hair.
  
  

Stick Mummy

• This mummy, as described at familyfun.go.com, makes a fun window decoration or a spooky addition to inside or outdoor decorations. Either find a few sticks from outside or purchase craft sticks from a craft store, along with plastic eyes. These mummies are made of five sticks glued together with a central stick as the body and four more sticks as the arms and legs. The sticks are wrapped in gauze, cheesecloth or white paper, and the eyes are glued to the head end of the body stick.
  
  Small mummies are made of 4- to 6-inch craft sticks, while large mummies can be made from large fence posts or broomsticks. Make a scary mummy by gluing spiders and other plastic insects to the gauze or attach a battery-powered sound recorder to the back of a large mummy to produce scary sounds.
  
  

Mummy Experiment

• This project shows your children how the ancients made mummies. According to Science Kids At Home, you need some Epsom salts and baking soda, an apple, medical gauze, a sharp knife and a permanent marker. Have your child draw a scary face on the front of the apple for you to carve out. Deep cuts and wide marks work best for this; you may also want to make a few puncture marks on the back of the apple. The apple then sits in a large bowl filled with a mixture of equal parts baking soda and Epsom salts for a week. At the end of the week, the apple should be dried out and the face should be very pronounced. As you and your child wrap the apple in the gauze, leaving the face showing, talk about how the Egyptians used similar methods to make mummies out of people and animals--including bulls, cats, birds and even fish.