Children of all ages love to craft. (even Grandpa Richard likes this activity!) If you have younger kids, here are some really fun craft ideas to try with them. (p.s. Make sure you visit your local dollar store for supplies. Some of them have a great selection, at great prices.)
FINGER PAINTING
All kids love the messy feeling of finger painting. Put an old shirt or paper apron on your kid before giving them the paints. For an even less-messy clean-up, take your kids outside and sit them under a tree in the cool shade to paint.
PLAYDOUGH ART
Another favorite of kids is play dough and clay. Lay newspaper on the floor and give your kids small tubs of their favorite-colored play dough. Encourage them to create sculptures with their fun dough.
SOCK PUPPET SHOW
Sock puppets are easy to make. Just glue on a pair of wiggle eyes and make a nose and mouth from felt. Then add a sprout of hair, made with colorful yarn. Make several of these sock puppets out of different sizes of socks and let your kids put on a sock puppet show for you.
PIPE CLEANER FUN
Buy a couple of packs of colorful pipe cleaners (try a dollar store) and let your kids create art with them. You will be amazed at what they can make from something this simple!
NOODLE ART
Give your kids a sheet of construction paper and a mound of dry macaroni noodles (any fun-shaped dry noodle will work for this craft). Let them draw a picture on their paper with a pencil or crayon first. Then glue around the outline of their picture with white school glue. Let them place their noodles on top of the glue to create a fun noodle art picture.
MORE IDEAS
For even more ideas, try these.
Talk to other parents and see what some of their ideas are; you do not necessarily have to completely copy these ideas, but you can get a sort of idea from them and then work from that.
As well, you can go to the library, where they have books with ideas. (see one example of a book by clicking here) As long as you keep all of the crafts and activities relatively easy, and yet still fun and enjoyable, then there is really no way that you can go wrong. After all, as long as the children are having fun and learning, that is all that really matters in the end of things.
END?
That said, for more fun things to do with young children, you MUST read my other article about having fun with young children. Enjoy!
