Two girls playing with pipe cleaners and making shapesNeed some inspiration for your child’s art and craft activities?

Sometimes the ideas start to run thin, especially if your little one is an art and craft master!

When you just can’t think of another activity to keep your child busy while you take those precious 3 minutes to breathe unencumbered before they come running for help or approval – try these art and craft ideas.

They’ve been tried and tested by Bub Hub forum members, so rest assured that your kids will have a ball with them.

Walls Murals

Grab some old butchers paper and stick it together to make a large paper surface. Give each kid an area to work on and to draw, design and colour.

Our kids love this activity and we have had huge colourful wall murals of the beach, luna park, the mountains!

This is a good one to do the day after an adventure (lets draw what we did yesterday!). And don’t forget to hang it up!

String Magic

You need:

  • String or wool
  • Glue
  • Thick paper
  • Paints, crayons

Directions:

  1. Dip a piece of yarn or string into glue and place it on construction paper in an interesting pattern.
  2. Let it dry overnight.
  3. Once dry, your child can colour inside the spaces between the yarn to make an interesting design.

Tissue Box Slippers

You need:

  • Tissue boxes
  • Paints
  • Material, stickers, wool scraps to decorate

Directions:

  • Just decorate the tissue boxes with paints, material scraps, stickers, sparkly things.
  • Use the hole in tissue box for feet and away you go!

Puff Paint Pictures

You need:

  • 1 tablespoon self-raising flour
  • A few drops of food colouring
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • Water to make a paste

Directions:

  • Mix the flour, food colouring, and salt together and then add enough water to make a paste that is of a suitable consistency for painting.
  • Paint the design onto paper.
  • Microwave the painting for approx 30 seconds until the paint puffs and dries (adults required for this part).

Adventure Bracelets

You need:

  • Wide sticky tape

Directions:

  1. Place a piece of sellotape around the wrist – sticky side out – it makes a sticky bangle.
  2. Then you can go for a walk and find different things to stick on it. Funny shaped leaves, flowers, gumnuts etc.
  3. You can go to the beach and stick on bits of shells.
  4. Or at home stick on bits of felt, buttons, mini pom poms etc.
  5. You can put another piece of tape over it afterwards and keep it. Or if it’s flat enough, cut it and make it into a book mark.

 Bubble Blower Painting

You need:

  • 3 straws
  • Child friendly bubble mixture – the easiest bubble mixture to make is just water with washing up liquid in
  • Card
  • Food colouring in 3 colours
  • 3 containers the size of A4 paper
  • As many pieces of A4 paper as you would like

Directions:

  1. Fill the containers to about halfway with a mixture of bubble mix and water.
  2. Place 3 drops of food colouring in each.
  3. Place one straw beside each container
  4. Get you child to sit or stand in front of container 1 and use the straw to blow bubbles till they begin overflowing in the container
  5. Then take a piece of paper and gently lay it across the container for 3 seconds, lift it gently and hang to dry.
  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for each colour.

This is suitable from the age of 2 onwards and its so much fun and very easy to clean up afterwards

Moshie Monsters

If your kids are into Moshie Monsters, here’s a cheap way to let them use their imagination to make their own Monster!  Even if your kids are not the Moshie Monster type, you can still use this idea to make Monster puppets and characters to play with!

You need:

  • Old socks
  • Newspaper
  • Coloured felt
  • Craft eyes
  • Glue

Directions:

  1. Turn the socks inside out so the wrong side is showing.
  2. Stuff with screwed up newspaper until you have a hard ball
  3. Then, from the open end part of the sock, turn the sock back over the open end so it is sealed
  4. Use some coloured felt to cut out the eyes, nose, moustache, or any other features and glue them on with a hot glue gun.

Pipe Cleaner Creatures

This is so much fun and you can make so many strange and wonderful things. It’s great when the weather is bad and the boredom is sinking in.

You need:

  • Stickers
  • Googlie eyes (from a craft shop)
  • Scissors
  • Pipe cleaners
  • Glue
  • Old cotton reels
  • Wool

Directions:

  1. Thread pipe cleaners through cotton reels
  2. Start shaping them and decorating it to what your heart desires – people, animals, or creatures from your imagination! Decorate with craft eyes, stickers, scraps of material (for clothes), and wool (for hair).

Homemade picture/photo

We always take photos to remind us of places, but how about involving the kids in making a picture instead! It’s fun, cheap and easy to do.

You need:

  • A piece of paper or card
  • Some glue
  • Paints or crayons
  • Your imagination!

Directions:

  1. Gather some items that remind you of the place you are making a picture of – leaves, grass, flower, sand, pebbles. Make sure they are quite light in weight so that they will stay stuck with glue.
  2. Use crayons or paints to create your background colours.
  3. Glue your objects on to your design.
  4. You’ll then have a beautiful, unique picture to remind you of a beach holiday, or the local park!

Cardboard Box Easel

You need:

  • Empty cardboard box
  • Craft knife
  • Pegs

Directions:

  1. Take an empty cardboard box and sticky tape it shut.
  2. Mark a straight line along opposite corners and cut along the diagonals to make two triangular shaped boxes.
  3. Decorate the boxes if you wish or wrap in colourful paper.
  4. Make 2 small slits so you can attach 2 clothes pegs.
  5. Attach a piece of paper using the clothes pegs and your easel is ready for the kids to enjoy!

 

Let the kids go crazy with art and craft with these fun ideas. Find a heap more activity ideas in our Things to Do Hub.

Image credit: stfotograf/123RF Stock Photo

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