Halloween Cootie Catcher With Jokes: Free to Print, Same Square on Letter and A4
When this is folded you will be holding a working cootie catcher with eight Halloween jokes hidden under its flaps, ready for whoever picks a number first. The folding is the whole job: one sheet of paper, scissors, about ten minutes.
Download: Halloween cootie catcher, free PDF, Letter + A4. No signup, no email.
Most printable cootie catchers are drawn to fill their page, so Letter and A4 print two different sizes of toy. This one is a fixed square, 176 mm on a side, about 6.9 inches, on both pages: whichever paper your printer holds, the same toy comes out.
What you need
- The PDF
- One sheet of ordinary printer paper. Thin is right for this one. The last couple of folds go through several layers at once, and card stock will fight you and win.
- Scissors
- About ten minutes
What is in the file
Two pages, one toy. Page 1 is the square on US Letter, page 2 is the same square on A4. Print the one that matches your paper.
The dashed line around the outside of the square is the only line you cut. Every solid line inside it is a fold: the two midlines, the two diagonals, and the diamond joining the middles of the four edges. Under the square the sheet carries its own reminder: Cut out the square. Fold on the lines, printed side down.
The four corner squares hold TRICK, TREAT, SPOOK and SPELL, and those four end up on the outside of the finished toy. The numbers 1 to 8 run clockwise around the edge, and the eight jokes fill the middle diamond, one to a wedge, each one sitting with the number it belongs to.
Two of the eight jokes will look upside down on the flat sheet and four will read sideways. Your printer has not misprinted anything: each joke is turned to face out of its own wedge, so once the toy is folded every joke reads the right way up to whoever lifts the flap. Fold it before you decide anything went wrong.
How to print it
- Print only the page that matches your paper. Letter is page 1, A4 is page 2.
- Set Actual Size, not Fit to Page. It matters more here than on anything else we make. Fit to Page shrinks the square by a few percent, which quietly breaks the same-size promise in the title. The toy would still fold, it just would not match anyone else's.
- Everything is black and white, and the busier page is 3.7% ink, so a party stack will not dent the cartridge.
- To check, lay a ruler along one side of the square: 176 mm, about 6.9 inches, on either paper.
How to fold it
The folds are easy. The only one people get wrong is step 4, so read that one twice.
- Cut out the square along the dashed line. The dashed outline is the only cut. Leave every solid line alone; those are folds.
- Fold the square in half, crease, unfold. Then in half the other way, crease, unfold.
- Fold corner to corner, crease, unfold, both ways. Optional, but every later fold lands easier on a ready-made crease.
- Turn the sheet printed side down. Blank side up, jokes against the table. It feels wrong, and it is what puts every word the right way up in the finished toy. If one of these has ever come out blank on the outside for you, this was the missing step.
- Fold each corner in so its point lands on the center, where the creases cross. Press all four flat. TRICK, TREAT, SPOOK and SPELL are looking back at you now, with the eight numbers around them.
- Flip the whole thing over. The jokes are face up on this side.
- Fold each corner to the center again. Same move on the smaller square. The numbers come back up facing you, and the four words are underneath, where they become the outside of the finished catcher.
- Fold it in half so the numbers end up inside.
- Slide your thumbs and first fingers into the four word pockets and pinch. The catcher opens one way, then the other. Work it a few times to soften the creases.
How to play it
One of you runs the catcher, the other picks. They choose one of the four words; you spell it out, one pinch per letter, opening the catcher one way, then the other. All four words are five letters, so every turn takes the same five moves and nobody can call it rigged. They pick one of the four numbers showing inside; you count it out the same way. They pick a number once more; you lift that flap and read out what is underneath. The joke under flap 5 is joke 5: What kind of music do mummies like best? Wrap music.
A way to use it on the night
Park it by the door with the candy bowl. Whoever answers holds the catcher, the trick-or-treater picks a word, and the joke gets read out with the candy. The small ones too shy to say trick or treat will still point at a word.
More for the season
If the jokes wear out before the toy does, the paper fortune teller template is the same fold with the writing left to you: blank wedges, numbered flaps, your own eight fortunes. And if you are putting treat bags together anyway, the Halloween treat bag toppers print on the same plain paper.
Everything we make is on the free printables page, and none of it needs an email address.
