Craft for toddlers and pre-schoolers (party, ideas, game, parents)
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Wasn't sure where to post this, Parenting seems to fit best, but mods- feel free to move...
My kids go to playschool two mornings a week, and they started this thing where a mom comes in for every holiday and does a craft with the kids, and another one does a game. I could use some suggestions! There will be two teachers to help, and activities should be easy to do and short- half an hour or less- and cheap in terms of supplies.
- Harvest/ non-scary Halloween craft and/ or game for 18-24 months olds (6 kids, mixed genders)
- Harvest/ Thanksgiving craft and/ or game for 30-36 months olds (8 kids, mixed genders)
- Spring/ Easter craft and/ or game for 4 year olds (12 kids, mixed genders)
... yes, I have three kids under 4- the older two are twins, but one is advanced and the other is behind in speech, so are in different classes.
Wasn't sure where to post this, Parenting seems to fit best, but mods- feel free to move...
My kids go to playschool two mornings a week, and they started this thing where a mom comes in for every holiday and does a craft with the kids, and another one does a game. I could use some suggestions! There will be two teachers to help, and activities should be easy to do and short- half an hour or less- and cheap in terms of supplies.
- Harvest/ non-scary Halloween craft and/ or game for 18-24 months olds (6 kids, mixed genders)
- Harvest/ Thanksgiving craft and/ or game for 30-36 months olds (8 kids, mixed genders)
- Spring/ Easter craft and/ or game for 4 year olds (12 kids, mixed genders)
... yes, I have three kids under 4- the older two are twins, but one is advanced and the other is behind in speech, so are in different classes.
I will try to come back with some more suggestions, but here are a couple:
Halloween: paint mini-pumpkins
Thanksgiving: paper plate turkeys using their hands as the stencil for the tail feathers. You can find patterns online. I LOVED getting this at home and still have dd's from when she was really little.
My favorite one for Fall is one that is very doable with 6 little kids, but you might want to practice before doing it in order to see if it's something you want to tackle. You need: large manilla paper, brown-red-yellow-orange-green paint, q-tips and medium/large paint brush. Also helpful is either a sink just a few steps away, or a small bucket with soapy water for a quick wash up. An adult will have to do the first part with the children, but after than they can do the rest themselves. The result is delightful!
Using brown paint cover the child's arm from fingers to elbow on the underside of the arm (mostly on the outer part of the arm as the inner part never quite connects with the paper) with a light cover of paint, then press a print on the paper from the arm/hands. The hand/finger area becomes the branches of a tree and the arm is the trunk. Wash arm/hand immediately.
On a small paper plate, give the kids a small dollop of each color paint and a q-tip for each. They use the q-tips to put 'leaves' on their tree. However much they put on and where they put it is up to them and makes them all unique.
If you don't want something quite as messy, then maybe a jack o lantern windsock. You would need: paper plates (either white that has been painted orange or orange party plates), orange crepe paper and construction paper. You can choose to provide large googly eyes or make them out of construction paper and you can use silk leaves for the top or make them as well.
I'd suggest for this age pre-cutting various options from construction paper they can choose from for the mouths, eyes and nose and cut the lengths of crepe paper before hand as well.
The children choose and glue on eyes, nose and mouth for the face, then leaves on the top and streamers on the bottom. Glue sticks may not work all that well to keep these things on and glue bottles can be hard to navigate at this age, so an alternative is to use a paint brush and watered down glue.
My favorite Thanksgiving one also involves paint and painting the hands. haha
You need: small manilla paper, brown-red-yellow-orange-green paint, black marker, crayons and a place to wash up. Optional is a laminating machine to turn this into a place mat, or use corn kernels to glue on to feed your turkey if not laminating.
The adult lightly paints the hands and thumb brown and each finger a different color. The hand is the body, thumb is the head and the fingers are the feathers.
Using the marker draw the feet at the bottom of the body. The kids use crayons to finish the scene in whatever way they want.
If laminating, add the child's name and date. If not use corn kernels for the kids to glue on to 'feed' their turkeys.
Less messy...you need an empty toilet paper roll for each child, glue and colored corn kernels.
Cut the rolls into 4 rings. Roll the rings in glue and then in the corn kernels. When dried they are napkin rings for the Thanksgiving table.
Harvest Time - A Free Toddler Game (http://www.educational-toy-guide.com/freetoddlergame.html - broken link)
Halloween -
Make edible spiders using a snack cake, licorice (for legs), red gumdrops for eyes, some frosting or gel icing to secure the eyes
Or make a spider or other bug out of yarn. Use a styrofoam ball, black yarn, googly eyes secured with glue, black pipe cleaners for the legs. Put tacky glue on the ball, then wrap in the yarn, poke pipe cleaners into the ball for legs, glue on googly eyes.
Or just make a pipe cleaner spider.
For Thanksgiving, we made turkeys out of pine cones. We used foam pieces that fit into the slots in the pine cones for feathers.
A favorite of kids for spring is to take pine cones, cover in peanut butter and roll in birdseed to hang outside for the birds. Easy to do.
One I like to do uses: white copy paper, needlepoint canvas cut to Easter basket shape (big enough to fill most of the paper), brown colored pencil and crayons. Optional - Easter stickers.
The kids place the basket shape underneath their paper (copy paper because it's thinner and works better) and use their brown pencil slanted to the side and color over the basket shape to imprint it on the paper-think like leaf prints.
Then they 'fill' their basket with Easter things, either drawn on or stickers placed.
They can also use the crayons to finish out whatever scene they might want...grass the basket is sitting on, blue sky...etc.
There are all kinds of way to make paper Easter eggs too. You can use markers on coffee filters, water colors on newsprint or glue on torn pieces of paper on construction paper. You can make it 3 D by cutting slit halfway on 2 duplicate egg shapes and then sliding them together.
However, my favorite way to do eggs takes: egg shaped sandpaper, bright colors of crayons(broken pieces are perfect for this), copy paper and an old iron.
The kids color heavily (very important it be totally full of crayon) the sandpaper on the rough side then place the paper on top of the eggs and the adult irons it. The iron will melt the crayons onto the paper and the result can be amazing.
This is also a blast to do for fall, but not appropriate for toddlers. I even have a poem that goes with the leaves one.
One of my all-time favorite blogs is Soule Mama - she writes about crafting and family life, and has some great ideas in her book The Creative Family. It's more about sharing time with your kids, and allowing them the freedom to create in a way that helps them express who they are - but there are still some very cool ideas in there, for everyone!
She has a collection of some ideas on her blog, as well, here: SouleMama: crafting with kids There's a section on dyeing eggs with natural materials there, and links to other ideas.
I taught preschool for a number of years, and one thing I tried to do is let the crafts be for the kids - i.e., not going in with some preconceived idea of the end-product of what they were going to create. I wanted things to be much more open-ended, so they didn't feel like they needed to make something that looked just like some model I had brought in. There were times for things like that - they hand stencil turkey, for example - so that the parents would have things to keep, but for the most part, their creating was the point, not the product.
With this age, you are right, process is much more important than product. Each child's craft will probably be pretty unique. I loved painting mini-pumpkins. We decorated with glitter, markers, paint, etc. and each one had a different feel. With the younger ones, markers work well. With preschoolers, I like paint.
We did a lot of edible crafts too. You can make all kinds of animals or bugs or faces out of various snacks. Rice cakes make a great base for faces using raisins for eyes and pieces of carrot for noses, etc. If you have no allergies, use peanut butter or cream cheese as the glue. Then you get to eat your craft.
Oooh, thought of another good one - we used egg cartons to make caterpillars for the Very Hungry Caterpillar. We also made coffee filter butterflies. Then we read the story and they would put their caterpillar in a paper bag cocoon. We did this on a Friday. After the kids left, we would put previously made coffee filter butterflies in the cocoon and take the caterpillars out. We hung the *cocoons* up on in the window. When the kids came back on Monday and opened the bag, there was the butterfly. They loved that.
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