Keeping Everyone Safe
- Please use your own judgement when it comes to choosing items for your child to craft – take care to consider whether they might be a potential choking hazard.
- Please take care when using scissors for creative activities.
Meet Linda, mother of two and member of our fantastic Parent Panel; a diverse community of Rising Stride parents sharing their experiences of raising happy, thriving and confident children. In our latest blog, Linda shares some of her daughter’s favorite crafts.
As parents, we’re amazed by the range of activities that our daughter gets to do while at preschool. Some of her favorite activities are the arts and crafts, and she’s always super proud to share something she’s made.
Our daughter has done things like:
- Decorating a cardboard photo frame, and putting a photo in it, for Father’s Day
- Making and painting a colorful paper lantern to celebrate Chinese New Year
- Making a calendar that has her handprints on it alongside her photo
- Using different colored pen stamps to make colorful pictures of Elma the elephant for World Book Day
Doing arts and crafts at preschool has massively helped with our daughter’s development. She’s become more creative, her fine motor skills have improved and she’s recognizing different colors, letters and numbers now too, which is all great to see.
Fun activities we’ve tried at home
These preschool activities have inspired some creative ideas of our own that we’d love to share with you.
Creating cards for special occasions
This is always a favorite of ours! Get your child to draw or paint a picture – they might want to some add fun shapes or stickers to it. Then you can fold the picture into a card and your child can give the card to someone special. Mother’s Day is just around the corner, so this would be perfect for that!
Painting pictures with hands and feet
If you need an idea this spring, why not try making pictures from handprints and footprints? Paint your child’s hands with yellow paint and get them to do some handprints. Add eyes, a beak and some little orange feet and you have some cute little chicks. You can also paint your child’s feet with grey paint, get them to do some footprints and then draw some eyes and ears to make the shape into a bunny.
Making bookmarks
Another activity is making bookmarks. First, parents need to cut a rectangular square of card, then give it to your little ones to decorate. My daughter loves adding stickers, gems and drawing some pretty pictures on them but you can add whatever you’ve got at home. This is a simple but fun task, and your child can use their bookmark in their favorite books later.
Baking cupcakes and decorating them
It’s fun to do baking with your child and after the baking comes the decorating! Your child can decorate the cupcakes with things like colorful icing, sprinkles and stars, and then you can both enjoy eating a special treat that you made together.
Conclusion
Arts and crafts can be a great way to spend some quality time with your child. You can create some great pieces as well as special memories doing them and really encourage your child’s creativity. Give these ideas a go and let us know what you think. Thanks also goes to Rising Stride for the inspiration!