crafts

Stamped art flower craft

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 This flower craft has been decorating our dining room for a few weeks now and we are loving the splash of color.  You may have seen our DIY Shape Stamps post a while back.  We re-used that artwork to create this pretty flower craft.  Recycled materials crafts are nothing new around here. 
We love re-using artwork to make new crafts.  This flower art is just the thing to bring us into summer and would be a great gift for Mother’s Day…or just the thing to bring a smile to your face every time you see it hanging on the wall!


 

Flower Craft for Kids

The recycled artwork was cut into heart shapes and taped together.  I cut these out, but offered Little Guy the chance to trace heart shaped cookie cutters on the back of the artwork.  He did a few of the tracings, but decided to move onto something a little more rough and active.  Jumping off of the couch onto targets is much more fun for him than arts and crafts these days 🙂
Tracing cookie cutters to get the heart shapes is a great way to incorporate bilateral hand coordination and pencil control.  Older kids can then cut out the heart shapes for a little scissor work.

To make the stem, we rolled a piece of green construction paper into a tube and taped it securely.  Now this was fun for Little Guy.  Helllllo, telescope!

Tape a few paper leaves onto the stem and the flower is getting somewhere.

Another piece of tape secures the tube to the flower.  We used another piece of recycled artwork to make a blue circle for the center of the flower.  We glued it into place and this covered up the tape holding the stem in place. 

This flower craft is easy, and a fun craft for the kids!

Looking for more flower crafts?  You might enjoy reading about these:

Feather Flower Craft
Spring Nature Hunt Flower Craft
Recycled Artwork Spring Flower

Concentric Circle Stamp Art

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We do a ton of painting in our house.  This painting activity was very fun for Baby Girl.  We used a few recycled lids and bottle caps to create this art and had a blast! Use this as a creative painting activity for toddlers and preschoolers.


 Stamp art for kids

Pour a little paint onto a few plates…

Gather up a bunch of differently sized lids and bottle caps.

And start stamping away!  This was a fun way to talk about colors with Baby Girl.  She went for her favorite color, purple, a lot.

Older kids can stamp concentric circles.  This is such a pretty art activity.

Baby Girl had a blast with this.  She stamped and stamped…and then stamped some more!

Wouldn’t this make great birthday card art for family, or wrapping paper?

We ended up with a TON of circle art from this activity.

Let us know if you do this artwork activity!  We would love to see it.  Stop by and follow along with us on our Facebook page!

Looking for more creative art activities for kids?  Follow along on our Creative Painting Pinterest board for tons of creative painting ideas.
Follow Sugar Aunts’ board Creative painting on Pinterest.

How to Make Feather Flowers

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How to make a feather craft

If you have feathers and a few other craft materials on hand, you’ll this tutorial on how to make feather flowers. It’s a great fine motor craft for occupational therapy sessions because of the sensory textural experience and the fine motor opportunity. Kids of all ages will love these feather flowers!

How to Make Feather Flowers

These feather flowers are a great flower craft that are easy to make.

This was a super simple flower craft for the kids to make one afternoon.  We used a few craft materials we had on hand and loved the results!
 
Other feather activities include our burlap weaving activity and our feather beading activity. Each feather activity develops fine motor skills in different ways.

 

 
Easy flower craft for kids to make
 

 

 
 

 

How to Make Feather Flowers:

  1. Start with paper and paint.

    Paint paper with any type of paint. We used a regular painter’s brush for something different this time.  The brush strokes turned out textured and great for a background. This is a great opportunity to reuse and recycle crafts into artwork.

  2. Glue on a section from an egg carton.

    Paint the egg carton section, too. Once the paper was dry, glue on a purple section of painted egg cartons. 

  3. Add feathers.

    Add some glue to the paper around the egg carton and stick on the feathers.  These were our flower’s petals.

  Baby Girl is as much a fan of purple as she is of painting.  We have a lot of papers with purple paint all over them around here…

 

Crafts with Toddlers are messy!  Fun, absolutely!  Messy, definitely!

Once the flower was covered with yellow feathers, we used a few quill feathers as the stem and petals.  Keeping with the feather theme.

Our feather flower was done!  It’s now hanging beautifully in our dining room.  Baby Girl is proud of her flower craft. 

Looking for more fine motor activities? Grab one of our Fine Motor Kits!

Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.

Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:

Letters Fine Motor Kit
Kit de motricidad fina de verano
Summer Fine Motor Kit
Outer Space Fine Motor Kit
Space Fine Motor Kit
Spring fine motor kit
Valentines Day fine motor kit
winter fine motor kit
Winter Fine Motor Kit

Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:

Want access to all of these kits…and more being added each month? Join The OT Toolbox Member’s Club!

Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.

Peep Chick Puppet Craft for Spring Pretend Play

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This was a fun and easy craft to make with the kids with a few basic materials we had on hand.


Chick Puppet Craft for Kids

Pretend play with puppets is a great way to explore language with children, get the imagination, going, and just have some fun!  These chick puppets were a fun way to play and get some Spring fun going when the weather outside was not so Spring-like.  Mom loved these puppets for their fine motor work when that the kids did while making them. 

Use popsicle sticks and feathers to create a peep puppet for pretend play.

 

 {This post contains affiliate links.  In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post.  Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected.  You can read our full disclosure policy here.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts}
Painting crafting sticks is a great fine motor activity for toddlers.
We started with a few materials.  Baby Girl painted craft sticks with yellow paint.  This was slightly messy, but big time fun.

Use Feathers, paint, and glue to make a chick puppet craft.
We’ve been on a Spring chick craft kick recently and used the same yellow feathers as we did in our chick juice box craft. 
Once the paint dried, we glued our feathers onto the craft sticks.  Let the feathers sit for a little while to allow the glue to dry.

We then used wiggly eyes that we received free from www.craftprojectideas.com.

Feathers and popsicle sticks make a fun chick puppet craft for kids

Our puppets are starting to look more like chicks (and only slightly crazy)!

These guys fit in well in our house…

Pretend play for kids with peep puppets

A little bit of orange felt
for beaks and our chick puppets were finished.  We used these cuties to play, sing songs, and act out stories.  How can you use these chick puppets in pretend play?

Spring Crafts for Kids

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Happy Spring!  The birds are chirping, trees are budding, and the sun is shining…or maybe you’re still getting snow.  Either way, we’re in the mood for some Spring crafts!  This week’s Share It Saturday features are all about Spring crafts.  Pull out the glue sticks and get ready to start crafting.  These features are super cute and very Spring-y!
Lots of crafts for kids to make this Spring

Spring Crafts for Kids

What says Spring more than a flower craft?  We love this pipe cleaner snowdrop flower from Zing Zing Tree.
Want more flower crafts?  Gift of Curiosity has put together a collection of 8 Spring Flower Crafts.
These salad spinner 3D flowers from A Mommy’s Adventures are very fun.
Spring is all about birds and nests.  Get in the Spring mood with this birds nest craft (Buggy and Buddy).
How adorable are these footprint chicks from Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails?
If you’re looking for a sun catcher craft, these sun catcher kites from ABC Creative Learning are very fun.
We love these cotton ball chicks from There’s Just One Mommy for their super cuteness!
Some of our favorite Spring crafts for kids:
Spring chick juice box cover
Recycled Art Spring Flower
Spring Egg Carton Tulip Craft
Spring Nature Hunt Flower Craft

Spring Chick Juice Box Cover Craft

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Have a Spring play date planned?  How about an Easter egg hunt, preschool party, or hosting Easter this Spring?  These Spring Chick juice box covers would make the cutest addition at the kids’ table, right??
We made turkey juice box covers back in the Fall so these chick juice box covers came to mind with thoughts of Spring.  These cute little chicks will be the hit of your party…or just a fun craft for the kids to make and use again and again all season.


Kids can make their own juice box cover, perfect for Easter parties!

 


Make your own juice box cover:

It’s a fun craft for the kids and super cute!
{This post contains affiliate links.  In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post.  Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected.  You can read our full disclosure policy here.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts}
We started with a section of a paper towel roll.  Just cut the inner cardboard tube to fit the length of a juice box.  Then, slice right down the long end so you are able to wrap the cardboard tube around a juice box.
You can use a  pack of yellow feathers, or do like we did and cut up a new feather duster.  I had picked up a few new feather dusters at a yard sale last summer super cheap (5 cents a piece for awesome yellow feathers= yard sale score!). 
NOTE: if you cut a feather duster apart, do it outside!  Otherwise you will have zillions of little yellow fuzzies floating around your house for months.  Ask me how I know this 😉
Take a bottle of glue
and cover the cardboard tube.  Adding the feathers to the glue is fun for the kids…just stick them all over the tube.  Snip a small triangle of
orange felt
for the beak
and glue that on too.
We got an awesome pack of wiggly eyes from our friends at www.craftprojectideas.com.  A few of the smallest eyes in the pack and our Chick is coming to life!
Create a peep juice box cover with feathers and a recycled paper tube.
These guys are easy to make and super cute!  We pulled our chick juice box cover off of the juice box after snack time and have been re-using it for a few weeks now…even around smaller cups.  (It doesn’t fit as well, but still looks very Spring-like!)
Looking for more Spring crafts and activities?  Stop over to our Spring Pinterest board. 

Glass Gems on the Light Table

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We made our own colorful glass gems to use on a light table for a sensory activity and creative painting activity. These glass gems are fun to make and build fine motor skills.

Glass Gems

Do you have a light box or ever used one?  It’s a super cool way to play, learn, and explore.  We’ve done an attempt at a DIY light box before but weren’t too happy with the long term results of it. 

It worked well for tracing and handwriting practice, checking out a few cool manipulatives on the lights, but…well, you can read about our thoughts in the end.  We wanted to try another attempt and so this time, we did something just as simple and easy, but it worked WAY better. 

That post should be up this week.  For now, we wanted to share what we’ve been playing with on the light box.  Our own DIY colored glass gems!

 
 


 
Create your own colored glass gems easily for learning, decor, and play.

 

DIY Glass Gems

These cuties were very easy to make and VERY fun to play with.  We’ve been sorting, counting, patterning, and making shapes with our colored gems and on the light box, do they ever look awesome!

 

Use your colored glass gems on the light table for learning and play.

 

 

Check out that light shining through our gems!  WOW!  Seriously, this was so cool.  So, how did we make these gorgeous gems??

 

Create your own colored glass gems in any color for decor, learning, and play
 
Amazon affiliate links are included below.
 
We started out with a pile of assorted colored tissue paper
cut into little squares.   
 
You’ll also need a bunch of clear large glass gems. 
 
We used the 1 and 1/4″ sized gems that are flat on one side.  We found them in the dollar store but the are also available in the link above. 

 

Create your own colored glass gems for learning and play

 

Add a little bit of glue with some water and mix together with a paint brush.

 

Next, trace your gems onto a piece of tissue paper.  I cut out a whole stack at once and it worked well to cover each gem.  A pretty princess pencil makes it more fun 😉

Creating your own colored glass gems is a great activity for kids

 

Baby Girl helped with the next part.  She painted the glue mixture onto the flat side of each gem while I stuck the tissue paper on.

Make your own colored glass gems for learning and play.

 

They are starting to look pretty fun!

colored glass gems for play and learning. These are easy and fun to make your own colors!

 

Once the glue dried, we started playing!  We didn’t even pull out the light box yet.  Just playing with these colored stones on the table was fun.  These would be so pretty in a flat dish with a Spring centerpiece or perfect for math activities.  We sorted, stacked, made shapes, counted, named colors…how many ways can you think of to play and learn with colored gemstones? 

 

Rainbow Bead Bracelets DIY Dress Up Accessory

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Do your kids dress up in play clothes as much as mine do?  Any given day we’ve got knights, princesses, dancing stars, ninjas, superheroes, doctors, fancy ladies…the list of pretend play scenes go on and on!  And it is SO much fun to watch the scenes develop.  Oh yeah, there are fights and arguments that happen when someone wants to be the “star”.  And a lot of times the 6 year old, 4 year old, and 2 year old are just running around in total mishmash of costumes.  (Or totally naked in the 2 year olds case!)  But it is so much fun to see what character comes up from the playroom. 

These Rainbow Bead Bracelets are the perfect dress up accessories.  They started out as our Fine Motor Rainbow Pipe Cleaner craft and easily turned into colorful bracelets.

Fine motor craft with beads and pipe cleaners to make these rainbow bracelets.

 

Rainbow Bead Bracelets

Beading on pipe cleaners is a great fine motor activity for toddlers.
Beading the bracelets is a great fine motor activity that even toddlers can do.  Love those chubby little knuckles!

When we were done with our rainbow craft and pretend play, we just pulled them out of the Styrofoam and twisted the arches into bracelets.  Done!

Bead bracelets made with rainbow colors

There’s a color for everyone!  These bracelets are coming in handy for lots of dress-up fun! 

Creative Art Ideas for Kids

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Looking for creative art ideas to add to an art planning session? We’ve shared creative painting ideas before but the ones below are more general art activities you can add to the mix. Need some creative painting activities or fun ways to incorporate out of the box art materials? These art activities are fun ways to add a bit of creativity to process art!

Creative Art Ideas

 
Is there anything more fun than creating art projects with the kids?  Using unique materials to create, creative ways to paint, and fun ways to explore textures are just fun! 
There are so many ways to learn and explore with creative art projects.  Exploring nature, gravity, textures, and science all while making unique and gorgeous art…now that is cool! 
 
Check out these ideas:


Creative Art Projects for Kids

Creative Art Ideas
 

 

Fantastic Fun and Learning  used   Yarn Stamp Art
 to paint into pretty patterns and colors.  Kids can explore patterns and textures while stamping away with their own DIY stamps.  Now that is fun art!
 
How can you get crafty with nature?  Buggy and Buddy shares a super cool way that Using Sticks in Art for Kids can make fun art.  It’s time to get outside and get crafty.
 
 
Have a car lover in your house?  Why not foster that love into a gorgeous work of art with Racing Rainbow Painting Cars from Fantastic Fun and Learning.
 
 
 Mama to 5 Blessings shows us how to make art based on the stars!  Love those Construction Paper Art projects!
 
Make your own DIY Shape Stamps with Styrofoam and stamp away with shapes, patterns…or just be creative with that stamping! 
 
For more stamping fun, try this Goop Stamp Painting.  This was seriously a fun and different way to paint.  Super sensory and very messy, but it was totally worth the mess!
 

 Sensory Creative Art for Kids!

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