Craft Ideas with Toddlers??

[scrapperjade]

In an attempt to spend more time with my older DD, I want to start doing more crafts with her. I've been so busy with the baby, that I haven't had much time to play with Ava, and she's been acting out a bit. I'm hoping if I can spend some time playing & creating with her that her behavior will even out. I know it's because she wants the attention... and I'd rather give her positive attention than negative that seems to get dished out at her every day.

So, what are some fun, easy and cheap crafts that I can do with her? She's 3, and has an attention span of a flea, lol. Please link me up to favorite projects, blogs, etc!

[jessica31876]

I posted this a few weeks ago:

http://a-friend-to-knit-with.blogspo...rn-basket.html

seems like that would be fun for kids of all ages.

[SweetMelissa]

Our Wal-Mart has this plastic jar in the craft section that has all sorts of foam pieces, ribbon, buttons, sitckers and other things in it that was $5. Each jar has its own theme. I got "pretty-n-pink" & "litte knights". I haven't opened the girl one yet but I have opened the one with my son. He loved it. He took some of the foam pieces and glued pictures of himself onto them and then added a ribbon handle and some buttons to create a little hanging photo frame-ish thing for each grandma to have. He loved it. I also got glitter glue for him to use with it.

[julia]

The good ole play-doh is a huge hit in our house

[scrapperjade]

Originally Posted by julia

The good ole play-doh is a huge hit in our house

She calls Playdough "squishy-squishy", lol! It keeps her entertained for approximately 18 seconds. I get out the colors, she pokes it with her finger, and if I'm lucky, she'll cut out one shape with her cutters. Then she's done! It takes me longer to get it out than it does for her to play with it!

[WalkersMommy]

DS is 3 also and loves painting. I put him in the high chair so the mess is contained, and he goes to town with both brushes and his hands. Maybe try some projects like painting a bird house or something for her room?

[MamaBee]

I found with my kiddo if we did something that was structured to actually make something in the end instead of coloring (which my kiddo totally dislikes to do) it worked out better for us...

One of my son's favorite things are little puppets out of paper, pipe cleaners, and googlie eyes (which my kiddo LOVE)... I actually did a tutorial on the one that he likes to do... I also will have another kid friendly tutorial coming out on Friday...

J also likes to use his kid's scissors... so we've done a lot of cutting up tissue paper to make sun catchers... sandwich the cutting between clean contact paper.

Another favorite is stamping... I get out some of my old stamps and he will go to town on that... or painting... using different textures or cookie cutters to paint... if you don't want the possible damage of paint - shaving cream or pudding is fun too.

Here are some blogs that I like that have kid crafts on them...
http://pinkandgreenmama.blogspot.com/
http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/
http://www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com/
http://familyfun.go.com

[LoriJ]

I have found some great little kid craft ideas on www.gummylump.com. If you click on the spot that says 300 craft ideas for 2011... just ignore all the other crap about stuff for sale.

[kristijoy]

I've also used family fun's site. Plus my 4 year old son and I like to go to the library and check out books about 'art projects'. We get books like "1 zillion things you can do with a cardboard box". Or a theme. He LOVES holiday related projects (like valentines etc...) and love looking through the books and finding the project to make.

And for little kids...the best projects I've seen have the kids to ONE aspect of it. LIke paint a coffee filter with water colors and then the teacher sticks it into the clothespin His 2 teachers are brilliant for having projects that the kids 'contribute too'. At Easter the kids all painted with watercolors egg shapes and the teachers had paper baskets cut out for the kids to glue the eggs & grass onto. I've just loved their stuff.

[rach3975]

Cut potatoes or sponges into shapes to stamp with
Buy wooden pieces to paint or decorate with markers (Michaels has a bunch for $1 each)
Rip tissue paper and glue it to wax paper to make a sun catcher
Buy a big thing of popsicle sticks and use them for little houses, frames that you decorate, stems for flowers, bottoms for stick puppets, etc
Use "real" materials, like gluing dirt on a picture of flowers growing or making a tree and gluing acorns on it
Buy a roll of butcher block paper (or anything long enough) and trace her, then let her decorate herself


My kids like crafts, but they like cooking projects more. Sometimes we combine the 2 by making playdough and other craft materials. Other times we do a cooking project we have to decorate, like dirt dessert.I've also seen a recipe for a blue jello ocean with gummy sharks, probably on the jello (kraft?) website.

[JenTapler]

I recently had an "Arts and Crafts" day with my 4-yr-old son and we had so much fun!! A few of the things we did:

- Marble Painting - use a square cake tin with paper cut the same size and placed inside the tin. Coat a few marbles in paint and throw them in the tin. Let your kid tile the tin from side to side, allowing the marble to roll all around, "painting" a fabulous abstract piece of art on the paper! This is also a great way to teach color blending as the colors often blend together to form new colors as the marbles roll around.

- Yarn painting - same basic concept - pour paint into several different shallow bowls and cut lengths of yard. Let your kid dip the yarn into the paint and use the yarn to "Paint" on a large piece of paper / canvas

- marshmallow sculptures - using marshmallows and toothpicks, create sculptures - animals, buildings, shapes, etc - great counting, math, spatial awareness skills.

- Macaroni necklaces - use foodcoloring and vinegar (you can google the "recipe") to dye macaroni, let dry overnight, then string onto yarn to create colorful pieces of jewelry.

- Reusable shopping bag - you can buy canvas bags for pretty cheap at a craft store. (Maui has a ban on plastic bags so you now have to take your own reusable bags everywhere you go shopping, so I decided it would be great to have my son decorate a few of these). We used puff paint to decorate ours and my son painted a solar system theme, but we plan to do a few more bags using stamps. There are lots of possibilities here.

We spent a wonderful rainy Saturday cooped up inside doing all of these things - it was a nice alternative to renting movies!

[jessica31876]

we used to do this with leftover wrapping paper. Inevitably I have tons left over at christmas time so Id let the kids draw on it or trace themselves or even get paint out and let them paint it. They loved it.

Originally Posted by rach3975

Buy a roll of butcher block paper (or anything long enough) and trace her, then let her decorate herself

[Starlight-Princess]

The things that work in my daycare are...

Collages-cut up magazines into little pieces (if you DD can use a kids scizzors let her do it) and give her a printed picture and tell her to paste the pieces onto the picture. For some reason kids love glue

Handprint pictures- you can use handprints for so much! We've done flowers, trees, suns, antlers the opportunities are endless.

Turtle Shaker- Get two paper plates and decorate them as your turtles shell, cut out eyes, arms and legs, and glue them on to your turtles shell,staple the two plates together leaving a gap and fill with small dry peas, small pasta, lentils, voila a little musical instrument lol

I also love
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/
http://www.dltk-kids.com/

Star x