Unleash Creativity with these Entertaining Kids’ Craft Ideas

Fun and Educational Kids Crafts to Spark Creativity: children’s washers can be made from a wide variety of recycled materials: shoe boxes, old toilet paper rolls, dried twigs. In addition to being useful for stimulating the imagination, they help young children think creatively, offering them manual alternatives to the rampant digital games.

Not to mention the many benefits in terms of developing concentration and mental and physical well-being. What’s more, creative recycling helps them understand, and touch upon, the enormous potential of seemingly useless objects while winking at environmental sustainability.

Kids crafts: what to make with children

Paper flowers, abstract paintings, three-dimensional castles, small animals, hand-painted stones–there are many children’s crafts you can make at home with simple recycled materials.

Where to find them? Everywhere!

Even bottle caps can be used creatively, and so can used jam jars, bread bags, pasta, wool yarn, buttons. There really is no limit to the imagination.

If older children, from about 7 to 12 years old, can try their hand at rather elaborate crafts such as cardboard playhouses or DIY castles with boxes, which require numerous steps and a bit of precision to build, little ones under 6 can be offered simpler crafts such as footprint designs, dough-covered saplings, and colored branches.

Here are some DIY ideas for children ages 7 to about 12:

• • Castles out of cardboard boxes and old toilet paper rolls
  • Castles with old socks
  • Necklaces and braceletswith colored paste
  • Cardboard candles
  • Lanterns with glass jars

Here are some DIY ideas for children under 6 years old:

• Cardboard flowers
• Masks with leaves
• Animals with paper plates
• Painted branches
• Christmas trees with pinecones

Easy children’s crafts with paper

Paper is an extremely versatile material that you can use even with younger children to bring flowers, fans, and three-dimensional animals to life. Even easier is to use it as the basis of creative drawings, letting children experiment with various artistic techniques.

Here are some very simple paper crafts for children:

• • Paper Flowers. Draw some flowers on sheets of colored paper, cut them out with scissors and draw the corresponding stems on a sheet of green paper. Glue the stems to the backs of the corollas and create a beautiful flower bouquet.
  • Fan. Take a sheet of white paper, decorate it with colors, fold it into an accordion shape, then fold it in half and glue ice cream sticks on the two sides of the fan. All that remains is to open it
  • Abstract Painting. Select about ten temperas of various colors and squeeze a pinch of each onto a sheet of paper. Once the sheet is filled, starting at the top end, pull the color with an old ruler. You will thus obtain a beautiful abstract painting.

What you can make at home with children

The list is long: small lanterns, cardboard houses, castles, masks, decorative garlands, necklaces and bracelets, with a pinch of imagination and the right inspirations at home you can make any craft.

In fact, the recycled materials that can be used are endless: with a simple thread and some old buttons
you can create a necklace, with shoe boxes and old toilet paper rolls it is child’s play to
kids to make a castle.

Not to mention scraps of fabric, bottle caps, tin cans, materials readily available around the house that can be transformed into creative crafts in the blink of an eye.

Kids crafts: the best ideas

The children’s crafts below are suitable for all ages but especially for elementary school children who have already acquired a minimum of manual dexterity.

We offer aIer complete tutorials that will show you, step by step, how to make a castle out of cardboard boxes, a cardboard mask covered with leaves, and a twig wreath.

What to do with baby 1 1/2 years old

It is important to involve children in creative activities from a very tender age. Obviously, a 1 1/2-year-old cannot try his hand at elaborate crafts, but he may well begin to familiarize himself with colors. You could then involve your little ones in making a beautiful abstract painting.

Here’s how to go about it. Obtain some baby finger paints, place a large sheet of cardboard on the floor after properly protecting the latter with a plastic sheet, place the paints on the floor on some plates and let the children dip their fingers in it encouraging them to spread the color on the large sheet.

What to do with 2-year-olds at home

With 2-year-olds, who have now acquired good manual skills despite being still very young, you can make different kinds of crafts, from abstract landscapes to cardboard clocks to hand-painted stones.

If you take them on a trip to the river, lake, or sea beach, and encourage them to find a nice smooth-surfaced stone, then you can take it home. l

Together wash it well, and encourage the little ones to decorate it with age-appropriate brushes and colors.

Crafts for children 4-5 years old

Preschool-aged toddlers are already capable of organizing a work if well guided by an adult, and they can make very cute works, divided into several stages of work. Try, for example, proposing these small works to them.

Seed Gliders

For 4-5 year olds, it is possible to propose workshops in which the activity requires some precision. The help of an adult will guide them in the correct implementation. You can therefore have them make sunflowers from dry seeds d coloring.

Materials

• kraft-type cardboard
• 1 pencil
• Vynavil-type glue
• 1 flat brush
• 20-30 pasta or small dried fruits such as rice, soybeans, pine nuts
• 30-40 seeds or larger dried fruits such as almonds, dried beans, pumpkin seeds
• acrylic colors: yellow and black

Procedure. Cut out circles with scissors in the cardboard, after drawing, of the preferred diameter, 10-15 cm may be fine. You can ask the child to use the base of a glass or large cup as an aid to trace the circle on the cardstock with a pencil.

Help the child cut out the circle if he or she fails. Brush the fluid glue on the circle with a flat brush. Place the round dried fruit in the center of the circle. At this point start placing larger fruit around it, such as almonds.

Secure the seeds well one by one, crushing them a little so they do not come off. Color the outer circle of grabde fruit in yellow and the inner small one in black with acrylic paints.

Your sunflowers are ready!

Do-it-yourself butterfly with leaves

A butterfly of dried leaves, flowers and pine cones, glued onto a sheet is easily made. An example could be this one, but the availability of dried leaves and fruits of different colors and imagination in this case is not lacking.

The part of searching with the little ones for the material in the garden or park are an integral part of the craft project.

Crafts for elementary children

Workshops for 6-7 year olds

Here are some crafts suitable for toddlers in elementary school, children just entering first grade.

Do-it-yourself crown with leaves and branches

To complete the DIY mask with leaves, nothing better than a beautiful crown of twigs, ideal for a Mother Nature-inspired disguise. Here’s how to make it in a few simple steps.

Materials

• • Cardboard box
  • double-sided tape
  • 20 dry twigs more or less long, but not too big
  • 20 leaves
  • wide paper tape
  • scratcher

Procedure. Measure the diameter of the head of the person who is to wear the crown and draw a strip on the cardboard that is long enough and a few inches high.

Cut out the strip with scissors and place it on the table.At this point start placing the twigs on it, securing them one by one with bits of paper tape. Fill the whole strip except the end, both on one side and the other.

Line the branches with a long, wide piece of paper ribbon, which should cover them all, so that the wreath, when put on, will not be annoying. Turn the strip over and with the help of double-sided tape attach the leaves to the front so that the cardboard is coated. The wreath is now ready to be worn around the head and closed with the stapler.

You can replace the real leaves with leaves drawn by the children themselves on the paper, and then colored.

Do-it-yourself mask with leaves

.It may be a nice idea for a Carnival costume but actually the leaf-covered mask is also cute to wear in spring to pay homage to Mother Nature’s awakening. Here’s how to make it with DIY.

Materials

• • Cardboard box.
  • Double-sided tape
  • Cutter and scissors
  • 10 thin dry twigs
  • 10 curiously shaped leaves
  • Pencil
  • Paper tape

  Procedure. Draw on a piece of cardboard made from an old box the outline of the mask, including the eyes. Cut it out, for the eyes use the box cutter (do it you parents because the children might get hurt).

  Apply small pieces of double-sided tape to the front of the mask. Remove the foil as you go and glue the leaves selected earlier on top. You can also add some little flowers. On the back of the mask apply, with some paper tape, the sprig that will allow your children to support it.

  Kids crafts: schoolwork for 8-year-olds

  Children as young as 8 years old are beginning to have more complete notions, so they can read and write quite fluently. They can thus follow written explanations and pictures of crafts, not just voice directions and examples from adults. In addition, they have acquired excellent control of space and fine manual dexterity.

  Let’s take a look at some works that we can make with them and keep them entertained.

  Sioux Crown

  To complete a disguise or just for fun, you can have an Indian crown made, with decorative feathers. You can easily retrieve the pigeon feather or other bird feather in a city park, while the feathers can be those lost from the comforter at home or in the woods, those near bird nests.

  Materials

  • white cardboard
  • transparent Cristal-type adhesive tape
  • scissors
  • 1-2 long white or gray featherstype pigeon
  • 4-6 fine feathers type goose or hen or comforter feathers

  Procedure.Measure the diameter of the head of the person who is to wear the crown and draw a strip on the cardboard that is fairly long and about 3 cm high.

  Cut out the strip with scissors and lay it out. Fasten the pen on it, in the center. Secure it with the transparent ribbon. Next to it, one by one with pieces of transparent ribbon, attach the quilts, symmetrically.

  The crown is ready to be worn around the head. Remember to run a full strip of tape over the feathers and cardboard to. not bother the wearer. Close with the stapler.

  Sketches for children aged 8-9

  For older children it can be a lot of fun to make their own castle. Some manual dexterity and planning is required here, which almost any child 8 years old and up can have.

  Do-it-yourself kids crafts: castle with cardboard boxes

  Castles never go out of style, they appeal to young and old, and making them with DIY is a great satisfaction, especially when they are created from seemingly useless waste materials such as old shoe boxes. They are perhaps the most popular of all, so here’s how to make them.

  Materials

  • 2 shoe boxes of different sizes (a larger one for the base, a smaller one for the top)
  • 1 small cardboard box for the tower
  • 5 rolls of toilet paper
  • scissors
  • strong glue and double-sided tape
  • grey and red cardboard
  • black and white colored tempers
  • brushes
  • cardboard rectangle for the castle base
  • plasticized sheet
  • cutter
  • sponge
  • pencil
  • tinfoil paper
  • 2 toothpicks
  • green marker pen
  • needle

  Procedure. Paint the cardboard box, toilet paper rolls and boxes gray by mixing a little black tempera with white tempera. Allow to dry. Draw the castle doors on the front of the boxes and cut them out with a box cutter.

  Make a stencil with the shape of the bricks using the laminated sheet and the box cutter. Simply draw close together bricks on the sheet and cut them out. Since this is a task that requires some precision and children may get hurt, it is better for you parents to make it.

  Shoebox castleTake a sponge, dip it in gray tempera adding a little black, place the stencil on the colored shoeboxes and pick. This will make the bricks appear.

  Place the larger box on top of the rectangular cardboard base and glue it with strong glue or double-sided tape. Take the medium-sized box and glue it on top of the larger one. Glue the tower by placing the small box vertically. Draw stripes on the gray cardboard with a pencil, draw the Guelph battlements and cut out the stripes.

  Glue the strips around the center box and upper tower. And thencut rectangles from the cuttings of the battlements around the castle gates.

  Draw on the same gray cardstock the castle windows and glue them on the boxes. With the pencil, make Guelph battlements on all the toilet paper rolls and cut them out with scissors, then glue them on the castle, 4 on the middle box, 1 on the tower.

  Take the foil paper and draw a stemma on it, cut it out and glue it on the tower. Draw two small flags on the red card, cut them out and attach them to 2 toothpicks, sticking them on the sides of the castle. With a marker, draw grass on the cardboard base, and if you want, add some tinfoil balls as stones.

  All that remains is to make the drawbridge: to do this, retrieve the piece of cardboard you removed from the larger box to make the door, drill 2 small holes at the top edges, thread two pieces of string making a knot at the back. Drill 2 more holes next to the door of the larger box and thread the corresponding pieces of twine through them, making a knot on the back.

  And voila, the castle is served!

  Other DYI ideas

  You may be interested in:

• How to make a terrarium: a step by step DIY tutorial
• Growing sprouts at home is easy, good fun and ….. healthy!
• DIY salt dough for kids: recipes, tricks and crafts