If you are looking for easy craft projects then your intention may be easy crafts for kids or easy crafts for the adults to prepare.
If you haven’t been to this site before than you may not be aware of my philosophy of crafts and art for kids. It is based on understanding how children develop developmentally and giving them what they are very capable of doing.
Much of the crafts you will find online are projects that are first made by an adult, the teacher or parent and then the child has to make the same exact project as the model. I call this copycat crafts and do not in any shape or form ascribe to this kind of crafts for kids.
Many of my crafts activities for children in preschool, kindergarten or at home are very easy craft projects as we don’t make children follow directions that are beyond them. Even if the directions are simple they should still not be following somebody else’s directions.
If you want crafts that you can do for the holidays you can find developmentally appropriate crafts activities at fall craft projects, winter crafts for kids, Thanksgiving projects for kids and Christmas crafts for children.
If you are looking for easy crafts that don’t necessarily have to do with a holiday you can check out paper plate crafts and flower craft projects.
The 2 images above are part of what I call the educational arts and crafts system. The first one is a transformed art activity. It is basically taking some sort of item like a flower pot, as is the case here, a pencil holder or anything else that has a function and redecorating it to the child’s abilities. You can of course, choose to do a specific activity with it like I did here which is decoupage.
Decoupage is a very easy crafts activity to do with children. What it is is using any kinds of paper to decorate an item or to collage with on a harder piece of paper. You use either a heavier glue than usual to give it a shiny finish or something called modge podge which gives it a glass like finish.
The children can use pieces of papers cut out from magazines, tissue paper or any of the number of types of specialty papers that there are around.
The second craft that I have shown above is a flower collage.
I am a big believer in using lots of collage ideas to stand in for standard crafts projects. They are very easy and allow children to create at their appropriate developmental level.
The problem that comes up is when adults like teachers and parents only want a crafts project that looks recognizable. If we understand what’s good for children at what age then this won’t happen.
If you want children to make flower collages, then you tell them that their job is to make flower pictures and give them materials that are suggestive of flowers. The same goes for snowman pictures and anything else you want children to make.
If you are not interested in collages but, want another easy crafts project then why not try beautiful coffee filter artwork. These can actually be a part of their flower making as well.
Get hold of these large, soft coffee filters, some eye droppers and watercolor, liquid paint.
If you don’t have any old medications that come in bottles with droppers then I believe you may be able to purchase these from your local pharmacist
Or you can prepare small bits of water with a different color food coloring in each bit of water.
You may want to use egg box cartons for the different colors. Lay the coffee filters out and using the eye droppers have the children take different colors and drip them randomly onto the spread out filters.
This will create beautiful soft patterns of color on the filters. The nature of the coffee filters has the liquid spreading out and making different designs.
After they have created as many colors as they like (or you give them) the children can paste these filters onto a pieces of tag board. (after they dry)
They can even cut around the designs and use the cutouts to paste with.
The coffee filters can be used along with cupcake holders, pom poms,strips of paper, pieces of aluminum foil etc to create beautiful flower collages on a piece of tag board.
Another thing to do with coffee filters is to allow the children to cut them up .
Let the children to snip around the edges of the coffee filters or let them cut them into pieces.
You can then use washable markers that bleed and have them color on the filters, then cut them and paste what they cut.
Simple and fun and gives credibility to your coffee habit. (if you have one)
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