No more arts and crafts activities at home

Although this is supposed to be an art and craft blog, it has been so long since I look for ideas online for art and craft. I guess basically I got lazy ever since my girl goes to school. And since she already have so much to do in school, I see that she is quite tired by the time she reaches home in the afternoon. So after taking her lunch, I normally let her play for a while before giving her shower and put her to nap.

By the time she wakes up, it is almost time for dinner. So no more time for home activities :)

Chinese New Year is around the corner and most kids would be very happy to see the fireworks.

For your kid's craft, you can let your child create his own fireworks picture.

Materials: Black sugar paper, glitter, glue, old newspapers, straw (optional)

Method:
1. Work on old newspapers. Spread glue on the paper in geometric shapes. If the glue is soft enough, you can put a small blob of glue on the paper, and then blow some air through a straw to spread it into interesting shapes. You can experiment with the consistency of the glue and the angle of the straw.

2. Sprinkle glitter onto the glue. Slide the excess glitter off your picture and back into the glitter container.

3. Repeat the glue and glitter process with different colors of glitter. Let the glue dry.

More Craft Ideas

Recently I have been not searching for craft ideas online for this blog. Since QQ has started school now, it wouldn't be necessary for me to prepare so much craft for her since she will be doing them in school.

However I still need some fresh craft ideas for my playgroup. If you have any great craft ideas, or any links to the pre-school craft site, do let me know yeah....

Sketch book

Materials: Some white A4 Paper, a thicker color paper, puncher and a string

Method:
1. Punch the papers and thick color paper
2. Bind them together into a book
3. Your sketch book is ready to use

Option: Cut A4 into half if you wish to have a smaller sketch book. Qiqi has done hers sometime back. Great for them to scribble their art!

Cut our trees

Got the latest newsletter from my favourite site, where they shared more ideas about kids craft for Christmas. My girl has enjoyed their crafts session from their previous publication and I am sure she will too, for this new one.








Materials: long crepe of green papers, scissors, glue and glitter

Method:
1. Fold up the papers, creating a few sessions.
2. Draw a simple pine tree, be sure to link up the sites.
3. Cut according to the shape.
4. Open up and you will get a link of trees.
5. Decorate them with some glue and glitter.

Fish Craft

This is a very simple craft we did in our playgroup the other day. Instead of having much preparation, all we need is just a paper plate, some glue and some scrap papers from the magazine. More details on the craft here.

This craft is done by Cheng Sim. Instead of using scissors to cut the paper crepes, she just torn them to create the fish scales effect. Looks really nice, isn't it?

Fun morning

Sometimes in the morning, we will do some simple craft at home. Not only it gives my girl some task to do, it makes her she feels proud the some art work she did too.

This is a simple Christmas craft using some scrap cardboard from my shampoo box. You can also do this by using different materials and past your decorated tree on a wishing card too. See more details here.

Mini sundaes

Materials:
Mini plastic cup, some pink and white cotton wool, colorful beads and glue

Methods:
1. Fill the cup with pink cotton wools
2. Glue white cotton wools to the top for whipped cream effects
3. Paste the colorful beads to the whipped cream

Now Mini sundaes are ready to be served to your kid's favorite teddy bears

3D Snowman

Since Christmas is coming, I got to get some idea for our playgroup and found this online at www.kidssoup.com

Materials: Blue paper, black color paper, orange color paper, tissue paper or cotton balls, glue

Method:
1. Draw a snowman onto the blue paper
2. Apply glue onto the snowman and paste bits of tissue paper (or cotton ball) onto snowman.
3. Using black paper, cut out shapes of eyes, button, and mouth.
4. Using orange paper, cut out shape of a sharp nose.
5. Decorate the snow flake falling with cotton balls.

Personalised Ang Pow

It would be fun to create some personal red packets (ang pow) to be used during Chinese New Year. I have not seen these, haha....am very eager to let Qiqi try them out :)

Materials: Some blank red packets, scrap papers, scissors and glue

Method:
1. Cut out the desire shapes
2. Arrange them into a picture and paste them onto the red packets

3D Chicken

While surfing the net for craft ideas for my playgroup, I saw this in www.kidssoup.com

Materials: White board paper, red and orange paper, scissors, glue

Method:
1. Trace out shapes of chicken body, head, wings onto the white paper.
2. Trace out the feets and crowns using the red paper.
3. Trace out shapes of beak from the orange paper.
4. Cut all the body parts out and glue all the small parts to the main body.
5. Draw the eyes for the chicken

Chain paper dolls

I got this nice craft idea from Mumsgather and thought it would be great to get the playgroup kids do this one day.
Materials: Pencil, paper, scrap papers or marker

Method:
1. First fold papers into a few sections.
2. Draw the doll (girl or boy) onto the paper (make sure u leave some connected area on the flips)
3. Cut them out and they shall look something like this.

4. To add some decor to the doll, you can even add button or any decor for a 3D effect :)

Finger painting

Kids love to get messy with their little fingers.
It is fun to make finger tip pictures, and they make personalized cards.

Materials:
Ink pad or paint, white paper, crayons or colored pencils

Method:
1. Draw a theme for your picture. It can be a tree, an animal or anything
2. Firmly press finger your tip onto an ink pad or paint
3. Press finger onto the paper to create prints onto the picture

Magic Mosaic Mat

How about wonderful mats from the paper mosaic craft created by your child?

Materials:
Plain or colored paper (for background)
Color paper or recycle paper for cuttings
glue and pencil

Method
1. Cut the paper into strips about 1/2 inch wide, and then cut the strips so that you have lots of little squares.
2. Choose a background paper and draw your design.
3. Spray mount glue (the kind which allows you to reposition your pictures over and over again).
4. When your picture is finished you may want to protect it by laminating it - these make wonderful place mats!

Staple dot picture

Materials:
print out pictures, colour paper bits from staples and glue.

Method:
1. Apply glue to the wanted area.
2. Paste the paper bits/ wanted color to the picture.
3. Dust of the remaining bits of paper into the container.

More nice artwork here.

We had an interesting craft last Saturday, contributed by Vignes. This is just like how we did the sand art and interesting enough, you can always try to do this at home with your kids.

Folded caterpillar

I used to do this a lot when I was a little kid.

Materials: color paper, scissors, glue

Method:
1. Cut 2 strips from 2 color paper, 30cm x 2cm
2. Paste the end together (form an L shape)
3. Fold the first color over the other. Fold the second color over.
4. Repeat step 3 until all paper finish.
5. Glue the end together.
6. Draw a face to the front and a smiley mouth.

Box -car toy

How about getting your toddler to make a fun toy on his own? I saw this from a site while surfing for some craft ideas. A simple and yet a challenging game for little one.

Materials: wide box, pen knife, car

Method:
1. Design some route on the surface of the box
2. Cut them according to the lines
3. Get your little one to move his car on the box

Challenge: Moving on the road to keep the car from falling

Potato stamp art

Ever worry about having to engrave those potatoes for your kid's art and craft? I got this fantastic idea from Kidley's blog. Instead of worrying about getting the perfect shapes, using the cookie cutters is one of the best way. After you got the shape, it is up to you to engrave the cut out shapes for more designs and textures.

Apple Collage

This is an easy craft, an introduction to the fruit family. Apple is also probably the first fruit that is being introduced to our kid.

Materials:
Scraps of red paper (tissue, wrapping, junk mail etc)
Small scrap of green paper
White glue, paper plate

Method:
1. Cover the back of the paper plate with glue.
2. Rip the scraps of red paper into small pieces and glue on.
3. When the whole plate is covered, paint another layer of glue over the top to stick down any loose edges.
4. Cut out two leaves and a stalk from the green paper and glue to the edge of the plate.

Home Made Wrappers

Need some present wrappers but no where to get them? This is how you can create your own.

Materials: White Mahjong Papers, cartoon or picture stamps, color pencil















Method
1. Spread the paper on the floor
2. Get your kids to stamp randomly onto the white paper
3. (Optional) Color the pictures















How does this look? *Taa...daaa*
Not too bad yeah...free wrappers and homemade greeting card for a kid's birthday.