I love kids crafts but lets be honest lots of the crafts that you see on Pinterest involve some set up time (possibly need to buy stuff first), a fair bit of adult supervision and some clean up afterwards. On some days I am up for that but there are other days when I am exhausted and my brain is just mush (I am sure this is a technical term?) and having to do all that well it can take the fun out of doing crafts with the kids. And as with most things it is normally on these days that the kids are determined to do a craft or art activity. So in order to maintain some sanity I will sometimes resort to my “easy crafts” – those craft activities that are easy to set up (does not involve a mad dash to the store), easy to clean up afterwards and does not require an adult hovering above them supervising but instead allows me to drink my cup of tea in an attempt jump-start my brain.
So with all of that in mind I thought it would be good to start a new board on Pinterest – an Easy Craft Board and for me to share with you 5 of my “easy art/ craft activities”
1. Collages – oh we have done so many of these. I often print off some colouring pages and then we use whatever is on our art cart or we raid the kitchen for some pasta and beans. Honest anything goes with this one. Pictures below are from our animal crafty post and Elmer.
Tip when doing collages with young kids I have found it better for them to apply the glue to the picture and then add whatever they want. When the kids try to add the glue to the pasta or bead etc and then add the pasta or bead dripping with glue onto the page it can often end in a bit of a mess.
2. Tissue art. We often use our tissue paper in our collages but we also like doing just tissue paper pictures. One of the kids favourite tissue art projects is when we choose a shape, they cover the shape in the tissue paper then we cut it out and either use the shape for a card or a picture. I personally think the tissue paper cards that the kids have made are stunning (the pictures below are from these blog posts Winter Tree Picture, Heart cards for children, Tissue paper pictures)
3. Water colour pictures (using water-colour crayons). I love our STABILO 3-in-1 pencils as they are nice and easy for little hands to hold and they are lovely water-colour pencils. The kids have produced lots of stunning pictures with just these pencils and a small cup of water.
4. Stencil art. It is amazing what the kids can produce with some nice pencils and their pens or pencils. I have these brilliant learning resources stencils that we love and I have also made the kids some basic stencils just by printing silhouettes of animals and dinosaurs onto card and cutting them out (eg our African animal stencil art post or our learning resources stencil art post).
5. Use Templates. It could be a template of anything but it gives the kids a starting point and then they can do what they want with it. I have a bunch printed out – trees, people, butterflies etc. The kids have used them to create all kind of works of art and some works that I shall call “Abstract Art”.
ofamily learning together 