Toddler Craft Activities

Here are some toddler craft activities:

Making impressions
Make rubbings of leaves (it's best if they're not crispy) or scraps of wall paper with indentations. Your toddler will find it easier if the paper and the object is taped to the table but alternatively you could just hold it down for her.

String painting
Let your toddler dip string or wool in paint and encourage him drape it on one side of the paper with a bit hanging off the side nearest you. Then fold it and show your little one how to pat the paper down. Both of you can pull the string out. Open it up and repeat. Using two shades of the same colour looks even more impressive. Or you could use two primary colours like blue and yellow which will create green when the two colours coincide.

Colour mixing
This very simple toddler craft activity gives young children an experience to understand the abstract concept of the colour spectrum. Paint your child's hands two colours. You could print them on paper but you also could skip this step. Ask your little one to rub her hands together and talk about the change of colour. Again you could do more handprints for a memento. It's handy to have bowl of warm, soapy water and a towel ready for an easy clean up.

'Butterfly' painting
Fold a piece of paper or card and encourage him to paint on one side. Then fold it over and both of you can pat/stroke it flat. Open it up and admire your toddler's masterpiece.

Photo by Kirsten Jennings

Creative 'paint' brushes
For different toddler craft activities you could let your toddler use old dish, nail, tooth, hair brushes and combs to paint with. You could both experiment using a variety of techniques, such as dragging, tapping and flicking the bristles.

Car/wheel printing
Collect one or two toy cars (the ones with treads are best). Put a thin layer of paint in a tray. Show your toddler how to push the car back and forth on the tray then ask him to drive it on a piece of card or thick paper.
By the way, if lots of colours are used, the picture usually ends up looking brown since toddlers often 'drive' their car in the same place. However, what the picture looks like is of no consequence to your toddler because he will only care about the doing of it. He will not share your concern for the end result because he is more concerned about the process than the product.

Vegetable and fruit printing
Simply cut a variety of fruit and vegetables in half. Put a little paint in a few plates and show your toddler how to print them on paper.

Potato printing
For even more variety of toddler craft activities you could cut shapes or pictures out of potatoes.

Ball printing
Encourage him to roll a small ball in paint on a plate or a tray then around the paper which has been placed in a high sided tray. A cat litter tray is good for this - no, not the one your cat is using! Get a new one just for toddler activities.

General printing
There are endless possibilities of toddler craft activities! Cotton reels, Lego/Duplo, pine cones, welly boots, hands, feet and any other 'safe knobby and washable' objects are good for printing and create great toddler craft activities.

Hand-print creations
Since toddlers don't learn much from doing this particular craft activity, I only do it occasionally. They do make fantastic cards for relatives! Here's a few ways to jazz up hand-prints:

• Use grey for an elephant, the fingers for legs and the thumb for the trunk. Then a finger print for eye.
• Paint just your toddler's palm and fingers black and do two overlapping handprints to make a spider.
• Paint their fingers and palm different colours and use the same over-lapping technique spreading the fingers around in a circle for a flower.
• Simply do two handprints in your or your child's favourite colour and one whole finger print in another colour. When dry cut them out and arrange like a butterfly. Use small pieces of art pipe cleaners or paper for the antenna.

Googly eyes work perfectly for animal handprints. To make the card look more fun and impressive create 'springs'. Glue two thin strips of card together at a right angle to each other. Keep folding the strips one on top of the other until the 'spring' is about an inch long and glue the end. You can use this or a few of these to fasten the handprints to the card.

I let toddlers do a little colouring on the inside of the card to 'sign their name' as a finishing touch.

Cutting activity
Teaching your preschooler how to use even safety scissors may seem daunting. But wouldn't you rather your child know what to do before he's given a pair of scissors along with a class full of others? Just be sure to only bring them out when you can give him your full attention. I (Claire) have successfully done this with some 2 year olds but I would wait until many are 3 years old.

Here's some guidelines for the first few cutting activities with your preschooler.

1. Sit facing your child at a child-sized table. If the table comes higher than his stomach, then it is best to sit without a table.
   Explain basic scissor safety, including only doing it when a grown up says it's OK.
2. Show your child how to hold the safety scissors. I've observed that some children start off using scissors with both hands. This could be a good first step but he will have to learn to hold the scissors with one hand eventually, so why not learn how to do that from the start?
3. Hold the edges of a piece of scrap paper taut.
4. Encourage and maybe aid your child to make snips along the edge of the paper. It's tricky but possible to hold the paper with one hand and help a child use the scissors with the other one when needed. I say 'open, close, open, close etc...' even when we do it together, it seems to help.
5. Turn the paper around and have a few nearby to replace it easily. Keep in mind that your child can tire quickly from this task especially when he first learns. I try and make a point to ask a child if he wants to do more at each piece or every so often. I've also been really surprised at how long even 2 year olds want to keep at it!

After you have repeated this activity a good few times you can see when your child is ready to hold the paper themselves. It's easier for children to start to hold and cut with thin card. Maybe you could use old birthday or Christmas cards. Cutting up staws and blades of grass are also good toddler craft activities.

Your two year old may be too young for this activity. Her hands could be too small, but don't worry, just try later. You will know when the time is right for your child.

Finally, a few notes about decorating your toddler projects...

Your toddler may or may not want to decorate some of the home made toys or instruments you make together. Using paint, crayons or collage materials to decorate your toddler project would make two toddler craft activities in one.

Collage materials are basically anything you can stick onto a surface. It is easier for a toddler to pick up thicker materials such as card than thin paper. You can use card cut from cereal boxes or paper from junk mail. Although magazines are colourful, the paper they are printed on can be too thin for your toddler to pick up and use.

The inside of envelopes can be brightly coloured and of course envelopes that held birthday cards are also bright. (Not forgetting the actual birthday cards themselves if you don't want to keep them for sentimental reasons.) Wrapping paper is also fun, but you may want to paste it onto a cereal box before cutting into pieces as it tends to be thin. Cut up into pieces, regular or irregular shapes, these can be used to decorate any toddler project.

You can also use pieces of cloth, buttons, pasta or other small items. Once you get in the swing of it you will notice loads of things you can provide your toddler with for collage. Of course if you are using small objects he needs to be closely supervised. Aside from decorating projects, simply making "sticky pictures" is a way to create more great toddler craft activities.

I rarely throw things away. I first think "Can this, or part of this, be used for anything?" The answer is usually yes when you have children around. (If you don't want to use wrapping paper for collage material you can save it to wrap pass-the-parcels.)

I hope you enjoy doing these toddler craft activities with your little one.

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