Favorite Kiddie Crafts ?

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

I was just wondering what are yours or your LO's favorite crafts.

DD2 is right into craft at the moment, anything from making a bracelet with her Nanna to drawing, coloring, paints and gluing.

So what do you guys do, what household items do you use and where do you source your 'supplies' or ideas?

This week we have made:

1. 2 x beaded bracelets (BIG beads)
2. Birthday Card with glitter, stickers and drawings
3. Letterbox and love letter @ the library - coloring, cutting & gluing
4. Toilet paper role animals - owl & elephant
5. 1 Ice cream stick monkey

I'd love some other cute ideas to try, i am googling at the moment and the stencils and things you can print for free are great, i think it's just as much fun for us mums.
Was thinking of making pasta necklaces ????????

The girls got an awesome craft table from DP's aunt for x-mas folded up it's a cupboard with blackboard fold it down it's a table with built in storage, in it we have - taxta's, crayons, pencils, glues, paints, paint brushes, stickers, glitter, paper, coloring books, feathers, colored icy pole sticks, beads

I have just realised and started keeping toilet roll inserts, paper towel inserts and will keep egg cartoons.
Am thinking of keeping bottle caps (milk ones)

What else should i add to the stash?

[indie24]

Paper plates make great masks, tambourines etc.

[Yeddi]

Have a look at enchanted learning dot com, they've got lots of crafty activities. Also for $80 you can get the pre-reading craft kit from homeschooling australia, which includes a booklet of ideas plus the bulk of supplies you need to make them.

As for your own supplies, you can never have enough goggle eyes and pipe cleaners.

[jackrose]

some of my fav web resources are "made by joel", "the frugal family fun blog" and "irresistible play based learning". My first stops for craft ideas.


Other things to save are the netting used for orange bags, great for all sorts of play and early embroidery, free postcards from cafes can be used to build sculptures if you make little slits in them, cut out pics from junk mail for pasting, buttons for sorting, threading, counting...

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

As for your own supplies, you can never have enough goggle eyes and pipe cleaners.

Ohh forgot we have goggle eyes AND pipe cleaners

[~Lashes~]

arround christmas and easter, i keep some of the gift wrap, and chocolate foil (ya know the coulored easter eggs one?) sometimes cut it up, or rip it up and they glue it onto paper, toilet rolls ect. cotton balls are great, so is cut up sponges, diffrent things to glue down, leaves and sticks are also favourites.
if you can get sponges big enough, cut them into shapes and youve got your own paint stampers (cheeper then store bought ones to)
not one of my faves, but the kids love it, playgroup has a "messy day" the 2 fave things all the kids love, is the foam table, homebrand shaving foam and food colour they mix it, make pictures in it (id recoment a good thick plastic cover for the table/surface you use!) also there hands may stay the color you chose for a while.
another mees day fave is a large container of the gelli baff stuff.
ahh theres heaps but ive just gone blank!! will come back if i have any "brain waves" very unlikly!

[Mum2SweetCs]

Dd loves watching mr maker and we get heap sof ideas from him. I just let her go wild with paddle pop sticks, card board and glue cos sje love cutting things and sticking it onto the paddle pop.

at the moment we are making a paper mache pig. I just got a ballon and mached it with some corn flour glue and then going to use egg carton for the snout and the legs.

[Shanti]

Great thread!

[danita]

i also keep egg cartons, magazines, nappy boxes (if u use spossies) they make great box cars, aluminum foil and scrap bits of material.

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

we made people from
Toilet rolls the other day
Lots of painting, tracing with baking paper.
DD1 loves cutting at the moment.


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- Sent from my iPhone, more than likely while I should be doing something else!

[JLeigh29]

ZF - I have a whole set of toilet paper animals I used for craft at school, got them online - maybe you could google??

B and I tried a torn paper (out of necessity, still too young for scissors here!) collage using his favourite pics from the junk mail catalogues a couple of weeks ago. We stuck them on an old box. OK, Mummy sticky taped them on, B pulled them off! We both had fun though.

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

Thanks Hun, we've done the animals, I googled love google for ideas.

Might do some paper mâché again soon, DD is rightinto cutting now, driving me nuts!


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- Sent from my iPhone, more than likely while I should be doing something else!

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

Ok so i am going to try some pom poms, am also going to make our own home made playdough - found a recipe on pinterest so might even make some as x-mas gifts this year if it works out well

So give me some new awesome crafty ideas for the kids.
Now the sun is omcing out i'm going to be getting the kids out on the deck with a drop sheet for some fresh air, fun & craft time

[~~Snoogans~~]

one of the *funnest* (yep, its a word!) things I do with my daughter is get a Canvas, some syringes (the bigger the better, can get from the chemist! just be prepared to be looked at like yr a junkie! hehe) and paint!

Put the Canvas up against a Wall or Fence, probably best to put a drop sheet, or old cardboard behind the Canvas as this gets MESSY!

Fill up the syringes with paint (this is messy but also fun)

Then let the kids squirt the syringes full of paint onto the canvas! Makes for awesome artwork! My house is FULL of these from my daughter! Her auntie even *commissioned* a piece for her spare room!

loads of fun! and LOTS of mess

[JLeigh29]

Nikky - that sounds awesome! I was only thinking about painting on canvas yesterday.

ZV - Pom poms are cool. The last play dough I made was very gritty from the salt. It was a no-cook recipe. Next time I was going to think about add-ins like glitter.

Have just finished making the base for home made paint - flour and water, so easy! I am just waiting for it to cool so I can add the food colouring. A few of my yummy mummy friends are getting together for our first play group tomorrow and I'm organising painting for us all. We have brushes, sponges, paint and fingers so it'll be an interesting afternoon watching half a dozen 18 month olds getting into painting, most for the first time!

Another idea I was thinking of trying that you might be interested in, ZV, is weaving with old onion/fruit bags. I thought we could use grasses, leaves, sticks, bark, wool, feathers, straws, fabric etc and make some kind of woven 'thingie'.

Oh, and one of the other mummies mentioned fly swat painting. Not exactly sure what it involves, but logic would say it's very messy and lots of fun! Toothbrush splatter painting is cool too - old toothbrushes dipped in paint and splattered on paper. Makes lovely wrapping paper. You can also turn the dried splatters (or big blobs of paint dropped onto paper) into funny creatures by drawing around them with a felt pen then adding faces, arms and legs etc. You get two art projects for the price of one that way!

[Mother Goose]

ZF - did you end up making the salt dough? I made it a looooooong time ago (when I was 9!) and was planning to make some Christmas deco's with DD this year... but there are soooo many variations on line! Although most call for 1 to 2 cups of salt and none with oil....

MG

[JLeigh29]

MG - I'm having the same trouble deciding which play dough recipe to follow! So many choices...
ZF - How did yours turn out? Please post the recipe if you like it!

Does anyone watch Mr Maker? Lots of good ideas on there!

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

Made playdough today, was awesome!


Sent from my iPhone, more than likely while I should be doing something else!