Archive for November 2nd, 2009
We can come up with an abundance of kids craft ideas when we think back to our own childhood. One of the most basic craft projects we learned to do is to color with crayons and markers. This is a great activity for youngsters as there are many educational coloring book pages available, giving them the opportunity to learn while coloring.
Kids love to draw, but instead of having their simple construction paper pictures on your fridge, why not teach the kids to make greeting cards with them. (Grandparents love to receive cards featuring art from their grandchildren!)
All kids love to paint with watercolors and acrylic paints. A favorite pastime of mine as a child was mixing plaster and water, pouring the mixture into a small mold, and then painting the item when hardened and removed from the mold. Doing this will give your kid a great sense of 
accomplishment.
With a little thought and research, we can find lots and lots of craft ideas that will get the kids away from the TV and video games for awhile.
No doubt most of us at one time or another in our life have created an origami project. I can remember, as a child, folding the corners of a sheet of paper to the center of the paper itself, sticking a pin through the center where the ends of the points overlapped, and attaching it to a stick. Taking it outside in the wind and watching it turn and whirl was great fun. The result, a pinwheel, was just one example of origami for kids to make.
The sailboats, airplanes, hats, and other items we made, though slightly more complicated, were all simple projects using origami. Once a child has mastered these skills, he can easily progress to more advanced paper folding designs.