Craft making is one of the best ways to bond with your kids and cultivate their creativity. It’s fun, productive, and educational. Plus, craft making requires minimal preparation and cost. You can even use recycled materials.
Many kids these days spend too much time on the computer. There’s nothing wrong with learning how to use technology, but children need to learn how to work with their hands to help them gain important values, like industry, perseverance, resourcefulness, and so much more. Spend quality time with your kids without spending too much money. Try these crafts with them.
Cardmaking
Nothing beats a handmade card as a birthday or holiday present. It’s something one has put a lot of time, though, and effort in making, which communicates their sincere feelings toward the receiver. Plus, it’s a good way to teach kids the true value of gift giving and have fun along the way.
Before you begin, set up a workstation for your activity. Cover the floor with a mat or old newspapers to avoid making a big mess on the floor or table. Have cleaning tools on hand in case of accidents.
Prepare your craft materials. You’ll need colorful card stocks or construction papers, glue, coloring materials (e.g., crayons, paints, markers, or colored pencils), stickers, craft tapes, and other embellishments. Next, fold the card stock or paper in two, then just enjoy designing and decoration your cards. Later, you can help your kids with writing their birthday or holiday message and put the cards inside neat A7 envelopes to send to their intended receiver.
Origami
Origami is an art form that uses paper and a series of folding techniques to form a variety of shapes, from plants to animals and objects. If you’re looking for a quick project to do with your kids, origami is the perfect activity for you. It requires little preparation but is challenging enough to hold the attention.
To start, you need colorful origami papers. They come in many sizes, from 1 ✕ 1 inch to 10 ✕ 10 inch papers, so choose a size that your kids can handle comfortably with their little hands. If you don’t have origami papers, you can use regular construction papers and cut them into squares.
Next, prepare patterns and diagrams you can follow. There are lots of easy origami patterns you can find on the internet. You may want to practice folding some of the shapes before you do it with your kids. This way, you can help them better when they’re having trouble.
Fun fact: the Japanese have a popular legend that says that whoever folds one thousand paper cranes in one year will have their wish granted by the gods. The tradition rose to popularity after the story of Sadako Sasaki, a little girl who had leukemia after being exposed to atomic radiation from the bombing of Hiroshima in WWII. During her long stay in the hospital, little Sadako would fold paper cranes to have her wish granted.
T-Shirt Stamping
Another fun albeit messy craft project to do with your kids, T-shirt printing needs minimal preparation. In terms of materials, you need a plain white shirt, colorful fabric, and rubber stamps with different patterns. You can easily find Self Inking Stamps in the market.
For the activity, cover the floor with old newspapers or a mat to avoid the paint from staining your flooring. It may be best to do this outdoors or in your garage. In case you can’t do this outside, here’s how you can remove fabric dye stains on different surfaces.
Next, create initial designs with your kids. You can draw them on paper to guide you when you begin. Once you’re ready with your designs, pour the fabric paint on individual basins, get the rubber stamps, and start stamping to your heart’s content. Leave the shirt to dry under the sun, or let them air-dry.
One thing good about this activity is that your kids get to wear the product of their work. Whether it’s the outcome they want or not, they can proudly display their original creations.
Sock Puppets
Sock puppets are used for making story time more visual and exciting. In terms of difficulty, they’re more complex than paper folding or T-shirt stamping but have the potential to be extremely enjoyable for you and your kids.
For the materials, you’ll need some old socks, buttons or googly eyes, yarns, felt, and fabric glue. If your kids are old enough, you can let them use a sewing kit too. This increases the complexity of the activity.
Create character designs for the puppets to guide you. Next, following your design, cut out the shapes you need for the mouth, the ears, and the other features of your sock puppets. Mark the spots where you’ll put the cutout features on the socks. Glue the felt pieces on the sock.
Sew the yarn on the top of the head for the hair. Let your kids use a thimble to protect their fingers when using the needle. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial to help you practice.
Hanging Ornaments
Hanging ornaments are the perfect crafts to make when the holidays are coming. Homemade ornaments give you holiday decoration a personality, and making them is a great way to get into the holiday spirit.
There are different kinds of hanging ornaments—glass balls, tassels, figurines, character decorations, and shape ornaments. Pick which one you want to make with your kids. If you want a quick project with minimal materials needed, glass balls and shape ornaments are the easiest to make.
The materials you’ll need to make glass ball ornaments will depend on your design. You can use your favorite craft supplies, like artificial flowers, glitters, strings, paint, and many others.
You can also make simple shape ornaments with your kids. You just need some colorful felt, glue, scissors, yarn, and other embellishments. As always, sketch your design on paper so you have a guide. If you’re making Christmas decorations, you can create mini pine trees decorations.
Draw the pattern on green felt and cut following your drawing. On red, blue, and yellow felts, cut out small circles to serve as decoration for your mini Christmas tree. You can add lines of gold glitter to your tree to make it more attractive. Use your handmade hanging ornaments to decorate your Christmas tree at home.
You can also check out these painting kits for any easy craft with the kiddos https://www.paintingkits.net/
Final Word
Making crafts with your kids helps you build a closer relationship with them. Most of all, it lets you teach them some valuable life traits in fun and creative ways. Through craft making, they will learn good things take work, so they have to be patient. Good results also come from being careful and doing your best. And if they want something, they have to work hard for it themselves.
Cricut crafts are easy for kids to make, so grab your kids and plug in your Cricut. Also, visit this site – we cover everything from vinyl cutting, paper crafting, fabric projects .
