Crafts For Children
What do you do with a bored child. You don’t want to just turn on the TV, but if you have to read ‘The Little Engine That Could’ one more time, you might just go insane. So, what can you do? You could sit down and make a simple craft with your little one. Your child will love having your undivided attention while the two of you craft together, and you can feel good about doing something productive and educational with your toddler. It’s a great way for you to spend quality time with your child. Give it a try.
Make Sockpuppets Together Let’s start by making a cute little sock puppet out of one of those lonely socks that lost its mate. I always enjoy making this craft with my daughter, because it gives us both something fun today and she gets a new toy to play with long after we are done making it.
One of the best things about sock puppets is that they allow your child to express herself through the characters she creates with the puppet. The world is a complicated place for your toddler and sometimes it’s easier to explore it with a puppet. They are a great way to spark your child’s imagination, plus they are very easy to make. All you need is a sock, and various crafting supplies to turn it into a puppet. Glue or sew two buttons on as eyes, then leave it up to your child to decide what this puppet is going to be and how it should be decorated. The two of you can add some hair, glue in a red felt tongue and of course give it the appropriate accessories. A princess puppet would of course need a crown made out of aluminum foil or construction paper. Just use your imagination - and that of your toddler of course and you’ll come up with all kinds of fun puppets.
Collage Craft Idea Most kids love to cut things out and use glue.Why not use this to keep your child busy making a collage. You don’t need much for this activity, just some old magazines, a large piece of paper, and of course scissors and glue. Of course you could also add some crayons to the mix to let your child draw around the glued-on pictures.
Have your preschooler cut her favorite things out of the magazine pages. Anything she would like to include in the collage goes. Then it’s time to glue the cut-outs on blank sheet of paper. After the glue had a chance to dry, the two of you can further decorate your collage with markers or crayons. Of course this masterpiece should be up on the wall or fridge so everyone can admire what the two of you made.
Fun Crafts You Can Make With Paper Plates We always have paper plates in the house and it is one of the first ‘crafting’ supplies I grab when I need to come up with an entertaining craft for the kids. Just add some markers, paint, construction paper or crayons and you are ready for a fun project.
Masks are a great paper plate craft. Start by cutting two holes for the eyes, then let your child decorate the mask by drawing on it or gluing yarn as hair, or construction paper shapes as ears etc. They can be animals, favorite cartoon characters or any creature they can come up with.
Another favorite of ours is to recreate food items on the plate.Use tan yarn as spaghetti that’s then covered with a piece of red construction paper (the sauce). Glue the spaghetti and sauce on the plate, then draw some ‘cheese’ on with a yellow crayon. Alphabet cereal and a paper plate can turn into a fun craft that will also help your child practice spelling. Just ask her to turn them into a bowl of alphabet soup and encourage her to spell her name or simple words with the cereal letters.
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- Susanne Myers