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10 Innovative Pre-school Craft Ideas

Many mums shy away from home-crafts with their children due to lack of inspiration, time restraints and the excuse ‘but I’m not very craft minded’.
Home-crafts can be lots of fun especially with pre-school age children whose imaginations are boundless once unleashed. Here are some pre-school craft ideas to get the creative juices flowing using everyday household items.

It doesn’t matter if you have no artistic ability whatsoever, the name of the game here is fun. As long as you don’t mind a little temporary mess and a house crammed with pre-school creations on every window, door and cupboard front and hanging from every ceiling!

Items you may need

• Blunt ended scissors
• Tissue paper
• Non-toxic paints
• Crayons
• String
• Glue
• Paintbrushes
• Paper plates
• Wool
• Old clothes (that you don’t mind getting paint splashed)
• Lining paper or wall paper

1.) Collages
These can be made from quite literally anything – dried pasta and seeds, buttons, scraps of material, buttons to name a few. A particularly fun project can be gathering things from nature to make into a collage – leaves, seed heads, flower petals, grasses etc. It makes for a fun outing and a fun activity afterwards.

2.) Straw Painting
Put large blobs of paint onto a piece of paper and make interesting shapes and patterns by blowing through a straw and spreading the paint. The paint will need to be of the right consistency for this or you may end up a little light headed and red in the face!

3.) Coin Rubbing
Place very thin paper or tracing paper over a coin and rub with a soft pencil which will leave the exact coin impression on the page. You can make this into a game by finding other household items for rubbing over.

4.) Hand-painting and Foot-painting
Make sure you use a large sheet of paper and prepare to get VERY messy. Kids love doing this – an open licence to get totally mucky. After the initial random wanderings over the sheet of paper aim to make pictures such as flowers, tree, rainbows and faces.

5.) Self Portraits – Life Size
Get your child to lie down on a large piece of paper while you draw their outline. Get them to do the same with you and then have a competition as to who can make their portrait the most life like. Crayons, paints, scrap materials to depict clothing, wool for hair and so on.

6.) Paper Plate Masks
You can use any materials you wish – felt tips, crayons, paint, glitter glue for example. Children seem to particularly enjoy creating animals to wear as masks. If you are worried at your lack of artistic ability use cartoon animal pictures to copy from as these are often the most simple to reproduce.
Once the picture is finished you can make 2 holes at opposite sides of the plate and attach elastic so the mask can be worn.

7.) Box Vehicles
Using a large cardboard box, paint its sides as a bus, train, space rocket, aeroplane, tractor or any other vehicle you choose. Once finished knock the bottom out of the box so your child can ‘ride’ in their creation.

8.) Sock Puppets
Using an old sock, glue, draw or paint on some features. You could use silver foil or buttons for eyes and nose. You can also use cut out card, tissue paper, wool or string to add hair and mouth. Once you get started you are more likely to run out of socks before you do ideas.

9.) Egg Carton Crocodile
Egg cartons are great for making life size crocs as their bumpy nature suggests the uneven surface of crocodile skin. Tie several cartons end on end which as well as increasing the size will wiggle realistically when pulled along.
You can make the head and jaws from 2 egg cartons back to back and eyes and teeth can be added by gluing on other bits of colored cardboard or counters.

10.) Egg Carton Flowers
Cut out the individual cups from the carton and paint different colors. Add a stick to the bottom of the cup, which can just be a twig from the garden, and you have a bunch of flowers.

Egg cartons are great for an endless range of pre-school craft projects. By cutting them up and adding things such as pipe cleaners, straws or lollipop sticks you can make all sorts of figures and animals.

You may well get carried away with the fun of it all yourself. Playing and creating with children is incredibly rewarding.

Do make sure you involve your child as much as possible. With very young children it is easy to take over the project so that they are just sitting and watching. They will easily lose interest if this is the case and you will have achieved nothing. If a child is engaged you will know as their enthusiasm will show itself in a flow of suggestions and ideas for adding to what you are doing. Don’t flog a dead horse. If your child is not engaged in the project in hand then move onto another project.

Article by Outofstress.com expert author ‘Deneice Arthurton’. © Outofstress.com