We do LOADS and loads of kid’s crafts around here. So what do you do with all of those paintings and artwork and beautiful one-of-a-kind pictures? You save some, give some to family, and the stacks of the rest…you can’t save it all!
Why not recycle the artwork into more fun crafts? This Spring Flower craft uses some of those special paintings in recycled art!
Recycled Artwork Spring Flower Craft
Baby Girl is big time into painting. She could paint every day and be more than happy. (And she does. And she is.)
We’ve got lots of paintings ready to be used for recycled art. This Spring flower used a finger painting she made.
We started with her blue finger painting and cut it up into strips. This would be a great scissor activity for young scissor users. Cutting strait lines is a great way to develop accuracy with cutting lines and self-confidence with the scissors. Draw strait lines on the backside of the painting and let your little one start snipping! Line accuracy doesn’t matter, this flower will look great however strait (or not strait) the strips of painting.
Tape or glue the strips to the inside of the egg carton section.
Add glue to the edge of the egg carton. Press it onto a sheet of construction paper. Add a little curve to the petals by rolling up the ends of the painting strips just a little.
We added green strips of construction paper for a stem and leaves for our flower craft. Hang it up and enjoy the artwork for a second time around!
Looking for more flower crafts? These are some of our favorites:
St. Patrick’s Day fun is all around! We created a SUPER fun small world and imagination play activity and have been loving all of the rainbows, leprechauns, and pretending.
Maybe the best part of this small world was creating all of the little parts that went into it. Our rainbow cardboard tube craft came into play for some good imagination. Picture overload coming up here… the fun was just too much!
Pretend Play with a St. Patrick’s Day Small World
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They turned out very cute and have been part of our play for a few days now. These cute little guys have made their way into the Little People house, into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lair, and even hung out with a few Lego guys! They’ve been well accepted into our toy collection 😉
The leprechauns needed a place to call their own, so Baby Girl and I painted a few leprechaun houses. Baby Girl is my little artist and always up for a painting project, so this was big time fun for her! Baby Girl’s leprechaun house is perfectly rainbow-y! I think the leprechauns are happy with their new homes.
He looks pretty pleased with his new home…
Leprechaun Sensory Small World
Adding in our rainbow cardboard tube and some rocks as a base, we had a pretty cute tray for sensory play. This was an invitation for imagination, pretend play, and fun!
Little Guy got right in there and had the leprechauns visiting each other’s houses, building a rock side walk, and chatting it up!
Baby Girl baaaadly wanted her leprechaun to get into his house. She tried. Repeatedly.
The leprechauns made a few trips under the rainbow and just had good St. Patrick’s Day fun!
Looking for more rainbow or St. Patrick’s day ideas? Stop by and follow along on our Pinterest board:
This Rainbow craft was fun to make and even more fun to play with. We’ve been using it in all kinds of pretend play activities lately.
Cardboard Tube Rainbow Craft
This post is part of the Project Create & Recycle series and this month’s theme is cardboard tubes. We can’t wait to see all of the fun crafts and activities linked up this month. Check them out on the blogs and the links below.
We started with a plain paper tube and just pulled out the paints. I didn’t get any shots of the kids painting this one, but it was fun! Once the paint dried, I cut strait down the tube to make the rainbow arch.
Fine Motor Skills:
A little glue and one cotton ball for each side of the rainbow were all we needed to finish our rainbow. Fine motor tip: Pulling a cotton ball into a strand is an excellent way to practice fine motor skills. Pulling the cotton ball into a strand without ripping the cotton requires a tripod grasp and strength of the arches of both hands. This is a great way to strengthen those muscles need for an appropriate grasp on a writing utensil. Pulling cotton balls into strips of cotton is a fine motor strengthening activity that we will definitely be doing again.
So, how did we play with our rainbows after they were done? Watch this space, you’ll be seeing these rainbows again, soon!
Do you have any cardboard tube activities or crafts to share? Tell us about them!
These DIY Shape stampers were part of a craft we made waaaaaay back at the beginning of the month before Valentine’s Day. (HOW did February fly by so fast???) We cut heart shapes from Styrofoam packaging sheets and stamped hearts. The hearts decorated our front window for a few weeks. While we stamped the hearts, I cut out a few other shapes from the Styrofoam sheet and had a little fun with shapes!
Shape Stamps
This was a simple craft and creative way to paint while learning about shapes. baby Girl is only just learning her shapes and calls everything a triangle. Little Guy is happy to help her out with the correct shape name…calling out the shape before she even has a chance to answer!
A few shapes cut from Styrofoam sheets were all we needed to get started. We stamped the shapes in red paint but adding more colors in there would made a fun creative painting art project.
Some of the shapes didn’t turn out exactly like they should have…but it was fun!
Stamping with these palm-sized stamps is a fun way to cross midline (reaching across the middle of the body) as Baby Girl reached to dip the shape in paint and then to stamp the shape onto the paper. Crossing midline is an important skill for little ones. This activity would be great for kids with special needs or difficulty using one hand/arm.
Baby Girl wanted to paint some of her stamps too. She is big-time into all things painting!
Our DIY stamps turned out to be a lot of fun and a great way to decorate our window for a holiday. We re-used our hearts and made a fun spring flower with the prints. Watch this space to see more crafty fun and see where this project went!
We’ve been having fun with our Styrofoam activities this month. Lots of fun activities are linked up and if you’ve got any fun Styrofoam blog posts, be sure to stop by and share them with us!
After months of wintery gray skies and freezing temps, we are ready to play with some rainbows and sunshine! It may still be cold and the snow is still out there, but we can play with color to brighten our day! These features from Share It Saturday have colorful ways to learn and play. Look out colors, here we come!
Try the celery experiment with every color of the rainbow. (P is for Preschooler) Set up an invitation to create and play with colorful parts, play dough, pieces, and manipulatives. The learning is non-stop! (Laughing Kids Learn) Prepare a St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Sink with rainbows galore. (Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails) Match colors in a color matching water bin. (Sugar Aunts) Dye pasta in a rainbow of colors for sensory play, crafts, activities, counting, and exploring. (The Connection We Share) Encourage fine motor skills with rainbow fine motor play. (Sugar Aunts) Create colorful magnetic art with a bunch of different colored pipe cleaners. (Munchkins and Moms) Build sculptures with colored ice sculptures outside in the snow, or bring the fun inside for colorful art. (Happy Hooligans) Build a pom pom catapult and toss all colors across the room. (3 Dinosaurs)
Winter crafts are one of our favorites! When it’s so cold outside and the snow is blowing around, it’s so much fun to just create a fun craft with a pile of paint, glitter, and STUFF! We’ve done quite a few winter crafts around here and this cute little snowman craft is a fun one to add to the list.
Spring seems to be a long way off with all of the snow outside, and this snowman has been happily hanging out on our dining room wall as we wait for any signs of spring.
Snowman Craft for Kids
{Note: 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.}
Baby Girl glued three of the condiment cups on a sheet of paper with a. lot. of glue. But isn’t a ton of glue always involved in crafts with two year olds 😉
This dried. Eventually.
We cut a little triangle from the orange felt and glued that on. We drew a cute little smile and arms with the marker and then decided to draw buttons on too. You could totally use the pony beads, but that didn’t happen with this cute snowman.
What fun winter crafts have you done? Stop by our Facebook page and share the pictures or links with us. And be sure to “like” if you’re not already. We would love to have you join us!
This month is all about Love and today we are talking acts of service for kids! Use these kindness activities to help kids complete service acts for others. The ideas outlined in this post can inspire random acts of service and kindness for kids.
Acts of Service Love Language
Acts of Service” is one of the five love languages identified by Dr. Gary Chapman in his book (Amazon affiliate links) “The Five Love Languages.” It refers to a person’s way of expressing and receiving love through actions and acts of service.
Another great resource for understanding the love languages in general is the version of this book for kids: 5 Love Languages of Kids.
The book is helpful to discover the key to effectively communicating your child’s love language and empowers you to:
Uncover your child’s unique love language.
Foster a supportive environment for successful learning.
Harness the power of love languages for more constructive discipline.
Cultivate a foundation of love for your child. (Co-regulation, anyone?)
These strategies support kids and parents by nurturing the child’s primary love language and helps you build a stronger, more thriving parent-child relationship.
This sounds so great for self-regulation needs in kids, right??
While the books offer tools for each of the love languages of kids and parents, today, we are talking about the acts of service. This is important because helping kids identify acts of service they can do supports empathy and social emotional skills.
We used the concept of a service act to create service ideas for kids using the craft below. First, we talked about service ideas for kids and the power of showing kindness to others as a service act.
Acts of Service are evidence of love shown by servicing others. You know the saying, “actions speak louder than words”?
We show our loved ones love by doing things for them; …Washing the dishes, preparing them meals, finding that missing Teddy Bear at 2 am are ways we show our families love through service.
We came up with ways for children to show their love for friends, family, and random strangers through acts of acts of service and kindness. When a random act of kindness is bestowed, it grows love forward! Not only does the giver feel generous, giving, and significant…but the recipient of that random act of kindness feels special, cherished, and loved.
This kindness craft idea is one kids can make and then use to do acts of service.
Kindness Craft Idea
To keep track of our kindness acts, we created this kindness banner. That way, we could decide on what task to do next. This was such a fun project to do, each step of the way! For kids that love crafts, a kindness craft hits the mark. You may find other crafts for kids that can be expanded into kindness craft ideas, too.
You’ll also want to check out our friendship activities for more ideas to spread kindness through crafts and activities.
I cut small banners from cardstock and glued on a patterned top for a touch of color.
These were taped to a long strand of ribbon and strung on our wall. We put it up at child-height so the kids could see the words of giving on each banner, and mark off the acts of kindness as they were completed.
The kids loved hearing all of the kind acts and deciding who should receive our acts of service.
After a task was completed, we stuck a foam heart sticker on the banner. Our finished banner looked so pretty and makes a great Valentine’s decoration!
The acts of service listed below can help you come up with specific service ideas for kids.
Acts of Service Examples
You’ll find a list of service acts below, and these are great examples for kids to expand on. There are so many ways kids can serve others:
Help family members
Help friends
Support neighbors
Help other classmates in learning needs
Help the homeless
Support the community
Serve the school by donating needed items
Create a food drive for the neighborhood needy
Find a charity and create a fundraiser
Start a service club
Clean up litter
Support a church
Older kids can attend a mission trip through a youth group
All of the types of service ideas can be expanded on. The trick here is to get creative and thoughtful. Select a group or individual that is in need and think of how you can support them.
Random Acts of Kindness for Kids
Use the service ideas below on the kindness banner craft.
Service Ideas
So what are some service activities that would be great for Random Acts of Kindness for Kids? We wanted to come up with a list of service ideas that kids could choose from to serve others with kindness.
Here are some ideas listed below. Use these service ideas to fill your kindness banner:
Collect canned goods for the food bank.
Pick up trash in the neighborhood.
Invite a new friend over for a play date.
Complete household chores without being asked
Send thank you notes to the fire department and police station.
Hold the door for someone.
Bring in a neighbor’s trash cans.
Write kind notes for siblings.
Put out birdseed for the birds.
Bake cookies for a neighbor.
Smile and say “Hello!”
Do the dishes or clean up the kitchen.
Deliver flowers to a neighbor you don’t know that well.
Donate toys or clothes
Give outgrown clothing to a smaller friend.
Donate books to the library.
Leaving kind notes.
Wave hello to a neighbor.
Shovel snow from a neighbor’s walkway.
Bring a treat to school for your teacher.
Draw a picture for the mailman.
Preparing a meal or breakfast in bed for family.
Help prepare and deliver a meal for a family with a new baby.
Tell the trash collector “Thank You!”
Write a note to Grandparents saying why they are special.
Give neighbors some candy chocolate “hugs” and a note saying “hugs from your neighbor!”
Draw a picture for your librarian with a note saying “Thank YOU!”
Bring bubbles to the park and some extras to share with other kids.
Write encouraging messages in chalk on the sidewalk to brighten someone’s day.
Have you done any random acts of kindness or acts of service with your children? What kind of activities have you done? Do you have a blog post to share that focuses on love, kindness, an activity you and your child completed together where love was apparent??
Exploring Books Through Play is an e-book with kindness activities, crafts, and games that teach empathy, kindness, and friendship. These are great activities to use in discussions on acts of service with kids!
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.
Valentine’s Day activities are all around! If you are looking for a few Valentine’s Day activities to add to your OT line-up, I’ve got you covered with activities that pack a developmental punch. Have you been cutting any hearts yet? Covered a box in paper for a Valentine’s exchange? Bought cards for the kids to give out at school? We’ve done a few activities…there was this Valentine’s Day Painting and even a Valentine’s Day Sensory Bin that you may have seen.
Painting noodles is such a fun creative painting activity that you can use to make bracelets and necklaces while building fine motor skills.
This Noodle Painting activity started out as a fine motor activity for Baby Girl and turned into a pretty Valentine’s Day craft and decoration.
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Fine Motor Activity for Toddlers
Baby Girl (age 2) LOVES to paint. She will ask to paint almost every day. One day I decided to bring out something besides paper for her to cover with paint. I pulled out a small handful of different dried pastas and put them into a divided dish. In the center was our spill roof paint cup
with red paint.
Baby Girl got busy painting. She explored each noodle and had fun painting! Manipulating the little pastas was a great fine motor dexterity task…and very sensory too, as she covered her fingers with paint.
We let the painted pasta dry and ended up using it another day to make our Valentine’s day craft.
Valentine’s Day Noodle Garland craft
I cut some hearts from red construction paper and gave Baby Girl glue. She squeezed the glue all over the hearts…however she liked!
Squeezing glue is a good way to encourage hand strengthening in children. Squeezing the glue bottle requires a gross grasp on the bottle. A gross grasp is using the whole hand in a squeezing manner and really strengthens the muscles of the hand.
She put the painted noodles in the glue with a tip to tip (pincer grasp). Picking up small objects with just the tips of the fingers requires precision and dexterity.
The hearts dried and we strung them along a strand of yarn in our dining room. They make a pretty Valentine’s Day decoration!
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.
Crafting Poms are SO versatile in children’s activities. They are not only a crafting essential, but also such an amazing learning tool! Play with crafting poms is almost instantaneous when you pull out a package of these fuzzy, colorful, soft materials. When we heard about the Ultimate Guide to Crafting Materials hosted by Craftulate, we KNEW that we had to join in on the fun and post about crafting pom poms. We wanted to put together a bright and colorful post all about our favorite ways to craft, create, learn, and play with one of the ULTIMATE crafting materials…crafting poms!
Learn, Play, and Create with Crafting Pom Poms
{Note: 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. As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}
Playing with Crafting Poms
Is it just our kids, or do yours do this too…when we pull out a bag of craft pom poms, there immediately, is a ton of bouncing, rolling, flying balls of fluff sailing across the table, being rubbed on little noses, held gently in little cupped hands…and just lots of plain silliness happening??? There is just something about these cute little fuzz balls that make kids (and Mom) happy and ready to create and play!
We’ve got a few crafts, activities, and developmental play ideas for you all about Crafting Pom Poms.
This Fine Motor Strengthening Color Match Activity worked on so many fun things! We matched colors to the bright pom poms and worked on intrinsic muscle strength as the kids pinched the clothes pins to grab up the matching pom poms. This was a big hit and so adaptable with different colored poms. you could use this Colored Squeezer Tweezers Set
to match the colors of poms as the child pinches them up and places them in a bin or even a matching bowl, like this colored plastic bowl set. Pinching the crafting poms up with clothes pins or tweezers is a great way to strengthen and develop the arches of the hands. This development is so important in handwriting and endurance while coloring.
Learning with Crafting Poms
Toddlers and preschoolers alike love picking up crafting poms, and putting them into bottles. The skills developed in an activity like Fine Motor Play with Crafting Pom Poms are many! Small children observe cause and effect and color identification all while working on tripod grasp, bilateral hand coordination, and finger isolation. They are LEARNING so much!
Crafting with Poms
We made this Line Awareness Craft Pom Snowflake Craftrecently and put those crafting poms to creative use! We used the soft little fuzzes to make a wintery craft that decorates our dinging room. A little glue and a handful of crafting pom poms can make any dreary day a time to create!
Looking for more ways to create, learn, and play? Follow our Sugar Aunts Pinterest board where all of our posts are shared in one place:
The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Materials is a HUGE list of crafts created with all sorts of items. Head over to Craftulate’s page where you will find the list of materials and links to posts on each one. Link up your crafting pom pom posts below. We’d love to see how you’ve used them to create, learn, and play!
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. We used peg dolls and acrylic paints that we received for free from 
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, 
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, glue, and markers.
, there immediately, is a ton of bouncing, rolling, flying balls of fluff sailing across the table, being rubbed on little noses, held gently in little cupped hands…and just lots of plain silliness happening??? There is just something about these cute little fuzz balls that make kids (and Mom) happy and ready to create and play! 
. Pinching the crafting poms up with clothes pins or tweezers is a great way to strengthen and develop the arches of the hands. This development is so important in handwriting and endurance while coloring.
