Making craft projects with your toddler is more than putting up with scattered glitter and broken crayons. It’s also about giving your tot the chance to master their fine motor skills, and to learn character traits such as patience, resilience, and resourcefulness. To make the process more entertaining for your next craftivity, consider using hands and feet as the main theme. It will be a sensory experience, for sure, and you may even experience bittersweet feelings looking at your output.
If you’re feeling stumped on what to make, below is a list to get you started:
Wall art
Be brave and paint a tree trunk on a plain door and let your kids stamp hand prints to make the leaves. Use varying shades of green for the “leaves” to add depth. A less permanent alternative would be to do cutouts of your tot’s handprints and footprints instead, and sticking these on the cutout tree trunk with masking tape. Looking for a craft project that doubles as a chore? Paint your tot’s hands with watercolor and have them “stamp” the shower wall or tub with their hands. Then let them scrub the prints off after their bath.
Animal crafts
Make lamb, bunnies, and all kinds of birds using your child’s hands and some finger paints from Joan Miro. Hand prints can also be turned into octopi, turtles or fish. Add a footprint to handprints and, voila, you have a lobster (the footprint is the body, the hands are the pincers). These are great supplemental activities to science lessons (basic biology and zoology) and are exciting study prompts. Some of these images can also be cut out and turned into hanging mobiles.
Wearables
Using fabric paint, stamp hand or foot prints on a plain white shirt or dress. Finish it off with your child’s name.
Framed timestamps
Take nice, clean hand and footprints of your tot every two years or so and frame them—it will be a nice reminder of how fast your tot is growing. You can also make handprints of all the family members in one page every two years or so—like a handsy family photo—and watch how your tot’s prints catch up to the rest of the family’s.
Plaster molds
This can be as easy as pressing on or stepping on a block of plaster of Paris which you can decorate after. You can also buy kits from a bookstore or art supply store; the kits will allow you to bake the cast and turn it into a ceramic souvenir. Or you can make molds of your tot’s hands instead. You may need to source specific materials and kits to make the molds since skin can get irritated by gypsum plaster when exposed to it for a long time.
It is limitless, what you and your tot can do with their hand and footprints. Just secure your furniture and floors with used newspaper to prevent spills and for easy cleanup. Do research on the new materials you’re going to use to make sure no allergic reactions occur. Lastly, let go and have fun with your tot for, really, making crafts is just an excuse to make memories.