Acorn Glue Cups (Treasure)
A great fall activity – turn simple acorn cups into delightful sparkling treasures – gems for your little pirate or princess or tiny tea cups for your fairy garden. These are easy enough for preschoolers to enjoy making – and are fascinating to watch drying. Simply color the insides of acorn cups and “varnish” with white school glue!
Coffee Filter Butterfly
Transform a coffee filter into a butterfly with this simple craft that is ideal for toddlers or preschoolers - but which can be enjoyed by kindergartners too. The best bit - spreading the colors together: the little ones will have so much fun watching the paints squish and mingle (and making a mess). And the end product is fun to play with too
Sailing Boat Collage
I created this project as a way to experiment with various paint techniques. I love the way that they turned out! This is not an activity to do in an afternoon - rather one to spread over a week or longer - each of the underlying "paintings" can be created separately in advance.
Chromatography Experiment
Black Ink is just black right? No! And in this experiment you can watch as the ink separates into several colors before your eyes. And not just black ink!
Coffee Filter Art
Take a coffee filter, make dots using washable markers, add water and watch as the ink travels and merges and makes pretty patterns.
Sharpie Coffee Filters
We discovered this project by accident whilst doing a different activity. Simple scribbles of markers can be turned into the most beautiful abstract art.
Shiny Art: Embossed Foil Pics
Using Sharpies to color on foil makes shiny art. You can also create embossed edges to your pictures by using glue to trace an outline underneath the foil. This is an especially cool effect for pictures of fish as they glimmer as if they were rushing through the water!
Soap Boats
Ivory Brand Soap Floats when dropped in water making it the perfect base for little boats. These are fun to sail in the bath - or in the summer months in a kiddie pool in the yard. Try racing them!
"Pencil" Cases!
These pencils are pencil cases! Great fun to make and very useful for storing all those pencils, crayons and pens. A fantastic project to do to celebrate going Back to School - or just because! This project is inspired by the brilliant Mister Maker.
Popsicle Stick Desk Organiser
Fed up of having pens, crayons, paintbrushes and pencils all over the place? Want to get organized before the kids go back to school? Why not have them make this popsicle stick desk organizer. This is a great engineering project that is fun to do - and so very useful! Customize the hight to suit your need - a few inches high to hold erasers or clips, 3 or 4 inches to hold crayons, or taller for pencils and pens. You can leave it unpainted, paint the popsicle sticks before you assemble, or paint the finish project. The choice is yours! This would also make a great gift for a teacher, or even for Dad for his Birthday or on Fathers Day.
Upcycled Pencil Pot
A great upcycling project to tidy your office / school supplies. Take an old Oatmeal container, cut to size, cover in wrapping paper and decorate and there you have it, the perfect container to organize your pens, pencils and paintbrushes. You could make one of these for your teacher on Teacher Appreciation Day.
Cute Lion
My kids loved creating these cute lions. Not only are they easy to create, but they look super cute too. Great for that rainy day at home, or to complement a Jungle or Letter L theme at preschool.
Tissue Paper Painted Fall Leaves
Toddlers and Preschoolers will love this autumn project. Simply pile small pieces of torn tissue paper onto a sheet of paper and spray with water. The colors from the tissue paper will bleed onto the paper and will merge, mingle and blend to make beautiful subtle patterns. Using fall colored tissue paper (reds oranges and yellows) and cutting out the finished art work into leaf shapes makes beautiful fall leaves. Mount the leaves onto a paper branch for a beautiful fall picture.
Halloween Monster Egg Heads
Let your imagination go wild creating these fun crazy hair monsters. Have your kids start them a couple of weeks before Halloween and they will be ready to sit alongside your jack-o-lanterns on your doorstep, or take pride of place on your Halloween Party Table.
Egg Heads
This is a fantastic project that will provide much entertainment for the kids. It is very exciting to watch as the hair begins to grow, and grow and grow. Use wheat grass seeds (available in most hardware or garden stores) for truly spectacular hairy growth.
Froggy Puppets
These frog's don't just look good, they "ribbit"! My 3 and 6 year olds both loved these frog puppets. The wonderful thing about them is although adult help will be required to build the puppets, smaller children will enjoy painting the plates and creating the egg cup eyes and will be so proud of their finished froggies.
Mondrian by Kids
These incredibly simple paintings in the style of Dutch Painter Piet Mondrian are a great way to get kids involved in learning about abstract art and the beauty of simple geometric images. The creation of the series of squares and rectangles is surprisingly satisfying and the creative process very rewarding. This project is ideal for elementary age kids and even older preschoolers can easily have a go. Older children may prefer to create their black outlines using rulers and black pen. That way the width of the lines can be varied.