Arts and crafts activities are a great way to engage with kids and encourage their creativity and imagination!
Here are some fun arts and crafts activities that you can do with your kiddos at home!
Fun Arts and Crafts Ideas From an Experienced Daycare Teacher
- Glitter Jar
A glitter jar can initially be a messy craft, but it will bring hours of joy to your baby or toddler!
Fill up a glass or heavy-duty plastic mason jar or water bottle about halfway with the glitter of your choice. Then fill the container 90% of the way with water.
When you go to seal up the bottle, put hot glue around the edges of the opening and then screw on the lid. This will help seal the bottle so there are no glitter water leaks and gives your little one a great, sparkly toy!
- Finger Painting—Seasonal Ideas
Finger painting is always a favorite for little kids, and there are so many fun ways to be creative with this kind of activity!
You could try a seasonal finger painting craft, like turning handprints into little turkeys for Thanksgiving, painting fingerprint “ornaments” on colored Christmas Trees, or tracing hearts onto homemade Valentine’s Day Cards with little paint-covered fingers.
The possibilities are endless!
- Coloring
Coloring is a timeless, fun, and easy art activity that you can do at home with your kids! It’s easy setup, easy cleanup, and can be a quiet, relaxing way to connect with and have fun with your children.
You can get creative with it, too! Crayons, colored pencils, markers, glitter pens, stamps—you can get pretty creative and elaborate with coloring if that’s what you want as well!
Never underestimate a good coloring session!
- Cut Out Animal Faces
If your kids are getting old enough to learn how to safely use kid scissors, then craft time with Mom or Dad is a great time for them to practice! You could make animal face masks with them!
Take different pictures of animal faces either from a coloring book or something you printed out online, and have the kids color the faces however they like.
When they are done, help them cut out the faces from the paper and cut out the eyes and mouth for them as well. You can tape string to each side to create a fun animal mask that your kids can wear around and play in!
- Nature Crafts
You can also have fun with crafts and get some great outside time in, too!
Go out into the yard with your kids or the park and collect different things from nature—they could be rocks, leaves, flowers, pinecones, shells, or whatever you come across. Then you can take them back home and you could glue them in different shapes to pictures!
The kids could be creative and create their own shapes, or you could have pictures of different shapes or scenes printed off for them and they could use their different pieces of nature to fill in the picture!