Share your summer craft ideas for my kids!

[thickbluebug]

salt dough hand prints - maybe the step daughter can over see this one

Salt Dough Handprint Plaque - Make a batch of salt dough (the recipe is below). Break off a piece of dough that's a little bigger than the child's fist. Roll it out flat and make it any shape you want. Place the child's hand in the middle of the rolled out dough and press it into the dough to make an impression. Press a paper clip into the top of the dough to make a hanger. Let the dough air dry or place it in a 300º oven 30 minutes to an hour, or until dry. Once dry, paint it any color you want. String a nice ribbon through the paper clip and tie it to make a nice hanger.

Salt Dough Recipe

Mix 1 1/2 Cups of salt and 4 cups of flour in a large bowl. Gradually add about 1 1/2 Cups of water until the dough forms a ball around the spoon. (If you add too much water, just add a little more flour. If it’s too crumbly, add more water.) Dump the dough out onto a flat surface and knead it until it is pliable and easily formed.

here are some holiday for the 4th of july

Red, White, and Blue Windsock - Paint a toilet paper tube red, white, or blue (or all three if you want). Let dry. Staple pieces of red white and blue yarn (or streamers, strips of paper, ribbons, etc.) around one end of the tube. Each piece of yarn should be about 8-12 inches long. On the other end of the tube, punch two holes across from each other. Thread a piece of string through the two holes and tie off to make a hanger. NOTE: You can just cover the tube with paper instead of painting it to make this craft go a little more quickly.

Construction Paper Windsock - You can make a windsock the same way as the one above only use a rolled up piece of construction paper instead of a toilet paper tube. A toilet paper tube will be more sturdy, but making a windsock out of construction paper will be a faster craft for little ones.
You can make either one of these windsocks more festive by using star stickers or glitter on the tube.

[heyaheather]

Draw sillouettes: Have one child sit, while the others draw as quickly as they can the sillouette of the first child. Need a light source, paper, pencils, a chair, a few kids! Rotate positions and do it again and again. You can decorate the sillouettes or paint them black like those of the past.

Make Stained Glass Art: Cut a design/picture out of construction paper--think simple shapes. Make sure you leave a wide enough strip between shapes. Reuse all that tissue paper from X-mas/B-days and glue around the openings in the paper.

Paper Beads: Use old magazines. Rip pages out. Cut or rip the pages into strips. With scissors, curl the strips of magazine to form a bead. Sort the beads by color. Then make a necklace or bracelet, stringing the beads along.

Interesing Paintings: Need crayons, water colors, and paper. Give each child a piece of paper. Have them draw anything on it. It doesn't have to be all colored in. Then use the water colors on top of that and let dry. The paint will not change the crayon drawing at all.

Mitten/Glove/Sock Puppets: Use any old mitten, glove, or sock. Use permanent markers to draw on faces etc.--whatever the kids want to make. Glue on wiggley eyes, pom poms, etc. Or use embroidery thread to create a nice design. Then have a puppet show.

String Art: Draw a shape on construction paper, like a triangle. Punch or Prick holes equidistance along the lines. Using a thread and needle, move from one side to the next to the next, always going through the opposite hole. I know I'm not explaining it very well, but in the end you get a circle in the middle. Do you remember doing this in school?

[collectorofbells]

get and end roll of newspaper paper at your newspaper office...

get out the crayons, paints ect..

unroll a long strip of the paper and have them make
wrapping paper for Christmas,birthdays ect (grandparents love this!)
banners
table covers for the family reunion

[XUfan]

Wow!!!! These are great ideas!!! I've got enough ideas for the whole summer...and then some!! I'm going to pass some of them on to my son, so that he can do them with the kids on those rainy days when he has them at home!

You're all great!! And I thank you very much! This was a fun, and very educational RAOK! But...I need to declare winner! So...as always...I went "old school", and picked a number from a hat (well...popcorn bowl!). And the winner is:

Okaliedokalie!!!! with post #12

Thanks to everyone who contributed!!!!

[okaliedokalie]

I'm saving all of these craft ideas for later, there were a lot of really great new ideas here! Thanks for hosting an awesome ROAK!

[collectorofbells]

do we have a craft forum? maybe this should be moved there for future reference?

what a great topic for an Roak!

[XUfan]

Originally Posted by collectorofbells do we have a craft forum? maybe this should be moved there for future reference? what a great topic for an Roak!

That's a great idea!! There is a forum called Arts and Crafts in the "On the Homefront" area. Can we get a mod to move this there???

[loguernsey]

1. button bracelets, just need buttons and stretch cord.
2.disposable cup, put small hole in bottom thread a ribbon or cord or yarn (13 in.) threw,put a large button on esach end and try to catch the button in the cup,c how many tries it takes to catch the bottom button in the cup.
3.shave crayons on to wax paper and iron with a paper towel over it cut out shapes and hang from window
4.wrap very thin strips of masking tape around a pencil, paint remove tape and they have their very own designed pencils
5.tip top taps, take metal bottle caps punch two holes in the top about 3/4 in. apart thread twine through the holes so both ends come out of the inside of cap attach twine to shoes by weaving throught shoe laces tie securely.
6. if you live somewhere that you have easy acess to twigs, make picture frames from them with twine and glue, kids can color pics, to put inside them.
7. we also paint the sticks and rocks or leaves then press them on a piece of paper to what designs we get my 3 1/2 your old loves to she is always looking for something to paint.
also the martha stewart web site has alot of simply crafts for kids
hope this helps

[Kristen.C]

You can make quilt notecards. If you have any leftover scraps of patterned paper from scrapbooking, cut them into 1 inch squares, or you can just cut up pages from old magazines- they can even look through the old magazines to find colors or patterns they like. Then all you do is use a gluestick to adhere the squares down to the paper so that all of the sides are flush together and voila, you have a pretty quilt patterned notecard.

For the older girl you can take it a step further and have her cut the squares into smaller squares or triangles so that she can make a more interesting pattern for her card.

I buy the cheap cards at Michaels using a 40% off coupon- I think you can get 25 cards and envelopes regularly priced for under $5 which would make it less than $3 with the coupon. If you don't want to put money out to buy the cards you can use cardstock or construction paper from home.

They can save the cards to use them to send thank you notes when they get birthday gifts, or just send a note to their school friends while they are away over the summer.

I'll even RAOK you some of my patterned paper scraps if you'd like (I've got a ton of them) if it sounds like something they'd like to do. Just PM me with your address and I'll send some your way!

[sbp]

We did a craft on Friday afternoon that I found in the latest issue of Family Fun magazine.

Put some drops of food coloring into some bubble solution and then blow bubbles at a piece of paper for an abstract piece of art.

Just be careful not to try this on a windy day because the bubbles kept blowing back at us and we too got 'painted' when the bubbles landed on us.