Country Place Crafts for Kids

Fun crafts for the kids. Easy to do and most need little supervision. There is a variety collection using paints, paper, scissors, glue and lots of child's imagination. Get the classic recipe for Play Dough and find Finger Puppets, Photo Magnets, Collage Crafts, Clay Craft and more. Get in there and have fun with the kids!!

Clay Hand Print Craft

Materials

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 teaspoon alum
1 1/2 cups water
fine sandpaper
acrylic paint (choice of color)
ribbon

Mix well in a large bowl. Roll into 1/2 inch rectangle. Press hands into clay. Cut around imprint into the shape you like. Make a small hole for hanging if desired. Bake at 250* on ungreased cookie sheet for about 30 minutes. Turn over and bake another half hour until hard and dry. Remove from oven to cool completely.

Sand with fine sandpaper. Paint both sides. If desired, cover with shellac or clear nail polish. After hand print is dry string ribbon through the hole for hanging. Makes a wonderful kefpsake gift!!

print coupons

Kid's Playdough

2 C Flour
1/2 C Salt
2 Tb Cream of Tartar
2 C Water
2 Tb Cooking Oil
Food coloring as desired
Oil of cloves, wintergreen

In a large saucepan, add flour, salt, cream of tartar, water and oil. Cook over a low heat until of dough consistency. Let cool, then add food coloring and flavorings. Makes 4 cups.

Wildflower Bookmark Craft

Materials

A small collection of wildflowers, ferns, and grasses
2" x 6" piece of white poster board
3" x 7" piece of clear contact paper
Scissors
Hole punch
Embroidery floss or yarn

Combine your child's love of nature and reading by making a wildflower bookmark! This project also makes a wonderful, homespun gift.

1. To find decorations, take a nice long walk with your child to collect beautiful wildflowers and grasses. Buttercups and other wildflowers with small heads and pretty colors are a good choice, as are ferns, grasses, and pine needles.

2. When you've brought your collection home, have your child spread out his finds, and then experiment with laying them out on a rectangle of poster board. (Make sure you leave room at the top of the bookmark, since you'll be punching a hole there later.)

3. Once your child comes up with a design he likes, lay the clear contact paper—sticky side down—over both the leaves and the poster board bookmark, centering it as carefully as possible. There will be a ½" border of contact paper all around the poster board.

4. With the scissors, make a diagonal cut from each corner of the contact paper to each corner of the poster board.

5. Now, fold the edges of the contact paper over to the back of the bookmark on all sides.

6. Center a hole near the top of the bookmark with the hole punch.

7. Let your child pick out a colorful piece of embroidery floss or yarn. Run it through the hole and tie it in a knot to form a tassel. Your bookmark is finished!

Funny Faces Artsy Craft

Materials

Head outlines
One oak tag backing for each group
Crayons and colored markers
Scissors
Stapler

Children create flip books in which eyes, noses, and mouths get all mixed up to produce some very funny faces.

Divide children into two or three groups and distribute a copy of the head outline to each child. Tell children that they are going to use their imaginations to draw a funny face.

Point to the horizontal lines and explain that these lines are the secret to making the faces really funny. Demonstrate how children should place the eyes above the top line, the nose centered below the middle line, and the mouth below the bottom line.

Encourage children to add anything else they wish to the picture, such as wild hair or a silly hat. After children finish their drawings, have them carefully cut along the horizontal lines.

Next, children in each group sort the strips into three piles, eyes, noses, and mouths and then staple each section carefully to an oak tag backing. Children can sit in a circle to pass the flip books around and create funny faces.

Paper Animal Finger Puppets

Materials

Paper
Glue
Masking Tape
Wiggley Eyes
Bits of String
Twist Ties
Small Pom Poms
Scissors
Pinking Shears

BODY BASICS Use scissors to shape the puppets' midsection from a 3-inch square of craft paper--perhaps a round potbelly for a pig or a rectangular body for an alligator.

For legs, roll and glue four 1 1/2- by 3-inch paper strips into cylinders. Make them wide enough to fit your child's fingers, so she/he can walk the puppet around.

Attach each leg to the midsection with a piece of masking tape, pressing one end inside the cylinder and the other onto the back of the body.

TALKING HEADS A dog, lion, bug, or deer: Draw a suitable head and ears on a piece of craft paper. Then cut out the shape and glue it onto the body. Glue on wiggley eyes and distinguishing details, such as a pom-pom nose, a mane fashioned from snips of string, waxed-paper wings, or twist-tie antlers.

A PIGLET With a small half circle, form and glue a paper cone. Flatten the tip of the cone with your thumb to create a pig snout. Glue on big floppy ears and attach the head to the body with tape.

AN ALLIGATORMatch up a pair of 2 1/2- by 1 1/2-inch rectangles with the shorter edges at the top and bottom. Glue together the very tops, then fold back the glued portion and make a crease. With pinking shears, trim the sides and bottoms of the rectangles to create a tapered, toothy jaw. Glue the folded edge to the back of the body. Finally, glue on a pair of googly-eye stalks.

Spinning Blimp

Materials

Paper
Ruler
Scissors
Crayons or markers

1. Cut a strip of paper about 6 to 8 inches long and 1 /2 inch wide.
2. Cut halfway across the strip about 1 /2 inch from one end.
3. Turn the strip around and do the same thing on the other end.
4. Slip the slot at one end into the slot at the other end.

You'll end up with something that looks like a little fish That's it! You've made a Spinning Blimp.

Hold the blimp high over your head and drop it. It'll spin like mad on its way to the ground. Now you have a blimp that spins through the air.

Note: Make the paper strip wider or narrower. Make the tails longer or shorter. Cut the ends of the tails so they're pointy. Try using different kinds of paper. You can also color your paper strip before you fold it into a blimp. That won't make it spin better, but it's fun to watch patterns and colors spin through the air.

Back To School Magnet Craft

Materials

Brown Paper Grocery Bag
Ruler
Pencil
Scissors
Acrylic paints: orange, yellow, black
Black fine tip paint marker
Hot glue gun
Quilt batting
Magnetic strip
Clothes pin

Cut paper sack in 4 x 6 squares (you will need two squares for each magnet) Draw a line across square at 1 inch and 3 1/2 inches.

Let the kids paint the top (1 inch section) orange, paint the middle section yellow and the bottom section black. Remember to paint both squares. After paint dries, draw a simple outline of a large pencil on the painted side of the papers, make sure the top of the pencil is in the orange and the bottom point is in the black. Or make a cardboard pattern and have the kids trace if they are old enough. cut out the pencil, put hot glue around the outter edges of the plain side of the pencil back and glue the two together, leave a 1 inch area unglued so that you can stuff the pencil with quilt batting.

When glue is dry, stuff (over stuff) with batting and then hot glue the remaining edge and clip with clothes pin till dry. Place magent on back and hang on fridge. The kids will love them!

School Picture Magnets Craft

Here's an idea for all those leftover school pictures we all have lying around. I give these to relatives to use as fridge magnets. This project is rated EASY to do.

Materials

School pictures
Juice can lids
Glue
Magnet strips
Ribbon and lace (optional)

Take one of those frozen juice lids, you know the round metal ones and cut a school picture to fit, with child's face nicely centered. Glue a piece of magnet strip to the back. Use the ones that come in a long length and you just peel the paper backing off them and they're ready to stick. Try gluing lace around the outside or a ribbon ruffle to dress it up.

Tip: You can also make a nice Christmas ornament by skipping the magnet and gluing a nice bow and loop of ribbon to the lid instead.

Book Covers

Materials

Brown paper bag
Scissors
Baseball cards or comics
Glue, tape or rubber cement
Clear, self-adhesive paper (optional)

Cut along one of the side seams of the bag and remove the rectangular base so all that is left is a long, flat sheet of paper. Match the height of the sheet to the height of the book by making folds of equal width on the long edges of the paper.

Lay out the sheet with the folded edges up, stretching horizontally in front of you. Set the book on the paper, right-side up and about 5 inches away from the right side of the sheet (for books that are larger or smaller than a standard textbook, use half the width of the cover). Fold the left side of the sheet up and over the book.

Now, trim the ends to about 5 inches beyond the edge of the book. Tuck the two ends inside the front and back covers of the book. Secure them by slipping the book's covers inside the folds.

Your child then can decorate the cover. Add comic strips or baseball cards with glue, rubber cement or tape. For extra durability, cover the work with a layer of clear, self-adhesive paper.