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Easy Shapes School Bus Craft

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An easy school bus craft is just what kids need before back to school, along with a little crafting fun!


I don’t want to even think about the end of summer and the start of school.  The summer fun is quickly passing by with long days of outdoor play and water activities.   We’ve got a few of the cousins heading back to school this fall.  A couple on the school bus and a few that will be starting up preschool for the first time.  New classes, new book bags, and new school shoes happen before the summer fun has even ended.  With all of the newness happening, this mama wanted to touch on an old familiar theme with the start of school quickly approaching.  


This school bus craft was a fun way to create while we explored easy shapes.  This was a great craft for my two year old as we talked about the start of school and some easy shapes.


Kids will love to make this school bus craft as a back to school craft that helps kids learn shapes.

Back to School Craft

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Easy shapes school bus craft

School Bus Craft

We started with a few sheets of yellow construction paper,
black construction paper,
and white printer paper.  I cut a few simple shapes from the paper.  An older child who is working on scissor skills could cut these shapes.
Building our school bus was fun!  We moved our shapes around until we liked the bus.  This was fun for Big Sister (age 6) as she helped us build the bus and made sure the windows were where she liked them. 
Baby Girl (age 2 and half) worked on her shape identification with this craft.  Big Sister and I would hold up a shape and ask her what it was.  She was loving the shape test!

We glued the shapes in place on our bus when we got it looking like we wanted.  Big Sister used some scrap paper to draw bus stops for our bus.  I love the “baby stop”!


school bus craft for learning shapes and preparing for back to school




                                                        School bus craft and book is great for back to school prep for young kids.

Head to the library and pick up a few of our favorite school bus books to go along with this fun craft:

Circus Tent Craft

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We’ve been on a little Circus theme around here lately.  You might have seen our roundup of favorite circus books or our ideas for a circus party.  This circus craft was easy to put together and the kids loved it.  They were itching for a painting craft and this one hit the mark. 


Circus tent craft for kids

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Circus Craft Idea for a Circus Theme:

Start with a few supplies:
paint brush
orange paper
black marker
Glue

To begin your circus tents, cut the coffee filters as shown.  This is a great way for little scissor users to practice their scissor skills.  Cutting coffee filters is more difficult than regular paper and a great way to practice accuracy as they cut along the folded parts of the coffee filter.  Adults can make marks on the coffee filter where needed for the kiddos to cut along. 

Once cut, start the painting!  We painted our circus tents with red paint on every other folded section of the coffee filters.  Use your imagination on your circus tents.  Circus tents come in many different colors and designs!
Once the paint is dry, place the smaller section of coffee filter under the larger piece.  Glue onto a sheet of paper.  Cut a small slit on the smaller section, and fold the doors of the circus tent open.  The circus is open! 
Use the black marker to make flag poles and glue small triangles of orange (or any color) paper to make flags.  Done!  This would be a great craft to do before an outing to the circus or just for fun when you read a few circus books. 
You may also enjoy our Kids’ Crafts Pinterest Board. Stop by and follow along:

Color Sorting Scissor Activity

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If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know how much we love to do fine motor activities.  Scissor activities for kids is one of our favorite fine motor topics and we’ve got a bunch of creative ways to practice them!  This fun fine motor color sorting activity was part of prep for another activity we were doing (watch this space to see these foam squares again!), but we had so much fun with it, that we had to share! 

 

Scissor Skills Activity for Kids

{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 the wooden crates from our Melissa & Doug Food Groups.  Besides being a totoally fun pretend play toy, the packaging is completely re-usable and perfect for sorting activities.  We shared the picture of our four crates on Instagram and had some great comments about how awesome these crates are for all kinds of play.

I lined the bottom of the four crates with different colors of foam sheets, and drew thick lines on matching colors of foam sheets.

This was a great way for Little Guy to practice his cutting with scissors.  The thickness of the foam sheets is great for new scissor users because it provides greater resistance and therefore slows the scissors more than regular paper.  The thickness of the lines is another way to grade down the cutting task for new scissor users. 

Slower cutting speed is good when the little one needs verbal and physical prompts to hold the scissors correctly, and how to position their assisting hand on the foam. 

Little Guy is working on his scissor skills and needs prompts to hold the foam/paper close to his body and to move the scissors when he’s cutting, and not hos whole upper body.  Strait lines are a good start for him for practice.  Older kids or those who are doing a little better with their scissor skills would benefit from thinner lines, curved lines, or even using construction paper instead of the foam sheets.

Once we had all of the foam squares cut out, we were ready for our sorting.  This interested Little Guy for a little while, but Baby Girl was the one who was really into this part of the activity.

She was able to sort the colors into the correct bin.  We worked on naming the colors along the way.

Sorting the squares was a fun way to play and learn!

We had a great time with this cutting and sorting activity.  Let us know if you do this at home, we would love to hear about it!

Looking for more scissor activities?  You may like some of these:

Scissor Skills with Play Dough | Cutting foam beads activity | Using stickers to help with scissor use

Stop by our Scissor Skills Pinterest board for more ideas. 

Follow Sugar Aunts’s board Scissor skills on Pinterest.

Recycled Artwork Spring Flower Craft

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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!


Use recycled art projects to create a flower craft.

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.
Spring flower craft using recycled art materials.
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.
We used a yellow egg carton section from our painted rainbow egg cartons. 
Tape strips of recycled art projects into an egg carton to create a spring flower craft.

Tape or glue the strips to the inside of the egg carton section.

Preschoolers and toddlers love to see their old art projects come to new light in a spring flower craft.

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.

display chidlrens' artwork along a string.
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:
Spring Nature Hunt Collage Flowers

Spring Time Egg Carton Tulip Craft
Earth Day Recycle Bin Flower Craft

Patriotic Craft — Fingerpainting Fireworks

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This weekend I had 5 kids (ages 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) and I had to think of something to keep them all busy. Finger painting is a fun craft for kids all ages, the babies love feeling the different texture of paint on their fingers and playing with the paintbrushes. I pulled out the paper and let them go to town with the washable finger paints!


 I helped my little guy (2) make hand prints in red and blue.

 The big kids enjoyed mixing colors while my 2 year old enjoyed painting his hand…and mixing colors in the paint jars…ughh. I think every color is now brown. 
 This project kept the kids busy for about 30 minutes, enough time for me to put away the dishes and wipe down the table 🙂

Once the paint was dry we gathered up some black construction paper, gold tinsel from a gift bag and scissors.  I folded the paper into a small square and helped the older kids cut out fireworks.

 We glued the fireworks onto the paper and made the tinsel stream down from the fireworks.  We talked a little about the 4th of July and I told my daughter it was the country’s birthday.  The best part was hearing
my daughter recite the Pledge of Allegiance  (so cute)!

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