Crafts

Halloween cardboard crafts turn free shipping boxes, cereal boxes, and paper towel tubes into decorations like ghosts, bats, black cats, skeletons, lanterns, and haunted houses, using scissors, glue, and acrylic paint. The easiest ones (the tube bat, the ghost cutout, and the pipe cleaner spider) take 15 to 20 minutes and suit kids from about … Read more

Christmas footprint crafts turn a child’s painted footprint into a holiday character or decoration, like a reindeer, snowman, Santa, penguin, or Christmas tree, using washable paint, cardstock, and a few paper or felt details. The easiest starting points are the Christmas tree, the polar bear, and the reindeer portrait, which each need one print, about … Read more

The best elf on the shelf arrival ideas show where the elf came from and that it’s happy to be home: a sign stuck to a window, a delivery pouch in the letterbox, a welcome message written in flour, or a reindeer team pulling a sleigh. Most families stage the arrival the weekend after Thanksgiving … Read more

A gingerbread man disguise is a December school project where kids dress up a paper gingerbread man so the fox (or anyone else) won’t recognize him and eat him. Most families start with a printed template on cardstock, then cover it in felt, craft foam, cotton, or fur to turn him into a snowman, a … Read more

A turkey disguise project is a Thanksgiving school assignment where kids dress up a paper turkey as a person, character, or object so it won’t end up on the dinner table. The easiest ideas use a turkey template traced onto cardstock, construction paper, felt scraps, googly eyes, and tacky glue, and take 30 to 90 … Read more

Scandinavian Christmas crafts rely on three things: pared back shapes (hearts, stars, trees, horses), visible natural materials (wood, wool felt, twine, unfinished beads), and a restrained palette of muted red, cream, and raw wood. Most of these projects are beginner friendly and take 20 to 60 minutes, though the felt ornaments need hand stitching and … Read more

Thanksgiving handprint crafts turn a painted palm into a turkey, tree, pumpkin, or wreath, and they work for any age from a six month old baby to a whole classroom. The trick is applying paint with a brush instead of dipping the hand, pressing the palm down first and rolling each finger flat afterwards, then … Read more

The easiest Halloween witch crafts for kids use a paper plate, a cardboard tube, or a paper bag as the base, plus green paper for the face, black cardstock for the pointy hat, and yarn for hair. Most take 10 to 20 minutes and cost under a dollar per child if you already own scissors, … Read more

Halloween egg carton crafts for kids work best when you treat the carton as the stand and the egg as the character: cut the pulp carton into single cups for bases, then paint or draw monster faces onto hard-boiled eggs, empty blown-out shells, or plastic eggs. Hard-boiled eggs give you the best painting surface but … Read more

It’s 8:40 on a Tuesday and there’s a note in the backpack. Bring one Halloween decoration tomorrow. You have a drawer of pipe cleaners, a paper plate, and a kid who is mostly asleep but very clear on one point: the spider cannot be scary. That’s the real use case for most Halloween spider crafts … Read more

Halloween toilet paper roll crafts are cardboard tube projects you finish in about 10 to 20 minutes each using paint or paper, glue, scissors, and whatever is already in your craft bin. The easiest for young kids are bats, pumpkins, and mummies, because they only need a wrapped tube and two paper shapes, and the … Read more

Last July we ran out of yellow. Not low on yellow. Out. Three kids at the table, a stack of paper plates, and one bottle of Crayola washable tempera that a very determined four year old had used mostly on her own forearms. So we finished in orange. The orange ones looked more like real … Read more

Last December a four year old at our craft table pulled the felt baby Jesus out of his popsicle stick manger and held him in his fist for the rest of the morning. He would not glue him down. He would not put him in the take home bag. He just carried him around like … Read more