- As with all things, make sure you do not leave your kids unattended while making or playing with crafts. Projects using small items are recommended for kids aged 3+ years.
Musical Instruments
For the drum you’ll need:
-Empty container with plastic lid
-Paper, crayons, or other things to decorate with
-Tape
How To:
- Make sure the container is empty and clean.
- Have your child decorate a piece of paper, and tape it around the container to create their very own (not to noisy) drum.
For the shaker you’ll need:
-Plastic Easter egg
-Dried beans or rice
-Hot glue or duct tape or packaging tape
How To:
- Fill the egg about 1/4 way with the beans or rice.
- Seal shut with hot glue or tape so that your child can’t open it. Now let them shimmy and shake away!
For the “castanets” you’ll need:
-One old glove or mitten
-Hot glue
-2 Metal bottle caps
How to:
- Hot glue one bottle cap on the thumb of an old glove or mitten with the sedated edge down. Make sure you cover the sedated edge thoroughly with glue so there are no sharp edges.
- Hot glue the other bottle cap where your pointer finger would be (same way as the thumb).
- Now your little one can wear the glove and clap their fingers together, making a cute clacking sound.
DIY Bird Feeder
You’ll Need:
-String
-Pipe Cleaner (Please only use soft fuzzy pipe cleaner. Do not use the foil pipe cleaner as pictured as it could be dangerous to birds.)
-Cheerios
How to:
- Bend pipe cleaner into desired shape.
- Have the kids string cheerios onto it. (You can have them count the cheerios as a learning exercise.)
- Twist the two ends so it becomes one piece, and tie the string to the top.
- Hang it on a tree outside so you can watch the birds enjoy their snack.
DIY I-Spy Game
You’ll Need:
-Miscellaneous small objects
-Plastic baggie
-Duct tape
-Rice
How To:
- Fill the baggie with rice and objects until the rice is mostly covering the objects, but make sure there’s some room for everything to move around.
- Seal the baggie with duct tape.
- Have the kids find all the objects. You can write a list of the objects to find or take a picture for kids that can’t read and have them cross it out as they go.
DIY Game Board
You’ll Need:
-Cardboard or posterboard
-Dice
-Marker, crayons, stickers to decorate
-2 to 6 small toys depending on how many players
-Construction paper or computer paper for challenge cards
How To:
You can get as creative as you want with this which is why it’s so fun.
- Start off drawing out your game board. For ours, we shaped it like the first letter of the kids’ names.
- Then, we placed letter “Z” on certain squares. When you land on these spaces you must pick an educational card (with child’s name) that I made based on each child’s age. For my 6-yr-old, I put questions such as “read the following sentence” or “Spell the word…” or “What is 10 + 3”. For my 4-yr-old I did letter, number, and shape flash cards. If they get the answer correct, they move ahead 1 space. If they get it incorrect, they move back 1.
- Next, the kids decorated the board, and placed stickers where they wanted the “challenge/silliness”. For the challenge/silly cards, I made cards like “Hop like a frog while mooing like a cow without laughing. If you succeed you move ahead 1. If you fail, you move back 1.” or “You didn’t wash your hands and got sick. Move to start.” “You shared with your brother. Move ahead 2.”.
- Once you pass the finish line you win the game!
My kids and I really had fun with this, and they want to play it multiple times a day. The great thing is you can always add to the cards or change them as they grow.
Floating Butterfly
You’ll Need:
-Empty toilet paper roll
-Construction paper
-String
-Acrylic Paint
-Permanent Marker
-Stickers or other stuff to decorate wings
-Pipe Cleaner
-Streamers or ribbon
-Hot glue gun (for adults to use only!)
How To:
- Have your child paint the outside of the toilet paper roll whatever color they choose. Let dry.
- Using a permanent marker, have them draw a face.
- Fold a piece of construction paper in half and draw one side of wings. Supervise your child as they cut along your outline (or you can do this part if they are too young.)
- Have your child decorate the wings.
- Punch a hole on either side of the top of the roll and put a string through.
- Take 1 pipe cleaner, and fold in half. Curl the two ends with your finger. Hot glue the folded point down into the roll so you only see the curled ends sticking out (the antennae)
- Hot glue the wings to the back.
- Hot glue streamers or ribbon to the inside
- Now you have beautiful hanging/floating butterflies.
"The Early Bird Catches the Worm" Game
You’ll Need:
- 2-4 clothespins
- Construction paper
- Scissors
- 3-4 pipe cleaners
- Hot glue gun
How To:
- Line up your clothespin to the edge of a piece of construction paper, and cut out a circle that would fit just behind the “beak” or tip of the clothespin, to right behind the metal in the back.
- After you’ve made your circle, cut directly across, leaving the top half slightly larger than the bottom.
- Hot glue the top half of the circle to one part of the clothespin and the bottom part on the other side so it looks like the picture above.
- If desired, cut out 2 tiny triangles to glue on the clothespin as the beak as well.
- Draw an eyeball on each “bird”.
- Cut the pipe cleaners into approximately 2″ pieces and slightly bend so they look like worms. (They don’t have to be perfect)
- Now you’re ready to play the game! Pile up the worms, and each player (bird) has to pick up as many as they can and bring back to their nest (directly in front of them). Whoever has the most when all the worms are gone, wins!
*It can be tricky to pick up the worms, which makes it more of a challenge. This is a great game to work on focus and fine motor skills.
