Fun Kids Craft Ideas

I want to share some really fun craft ideas along with a shout out to the Nick Jr. fan club web site.  I found this web site a while back when Kaitlyn started getting into Bubble Guppies.  They have a ton of printables.  I've found that the coloring pages aren't really worth it for us because you can get whole coloring and activity books at craft stores and dollar stores for under $1.  But the craft ideas are awesome!  We've done a few recently that I will share.  But this web site has everything from holiday cards and mobiles to board games and 3D projects, all with templates that you can print right from your computer.

 

For Kaitlyn, we did a Bubble Guppies hanging name sign and an Umizoomi Castle.  The hanging sign originally called for it to say "FALL," but I printed extra templates and modified it a bit to spell out her name.  This is just paper printouts glued onto foam sheets with foam letters on top.  The castle is just printed out templates wrapped around a shoe box and some toilet paper rolls.  It's great for teaching numbers, and there are plenty of other character templates to keep this fresh.  Kaitlyn has the Umizoomi characters and the Dora characters sharing a castle at present :)!



This is one of the fun board games they have.  If you have access to a laminator, this would be very durable.  Right now, ours is just paper on poster board for some stability.  But the kids have fun playing.  This one is a number game that involves number recognition and counting (forward and backward!), so it's a good learning tool.



This one I saved for last because, while it was obviously inspired by the Bubble Guppies hanging sign, there was no template for it.  Colton tends to be one of those kids who likes things that either don't have much out there as far as fun ideas (i.e. the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Puppy) or cost money for pretty much everything beyond coloring pages (i.e. Thomas the Train).  He loved Kaitlyn's hanging sign so much because he is really into letters and spelling his own name, but the Bubble Guppies aren't really characters he gets excited about.  So it took some improvisation and Google searching, but I came up with Thomas and Percy pictures that were similar enough to make a cute template, put some white foam clouds on them, and added his name.  He was thrilled!!  If you have a Thomas the Train lover, this would be a really fun project.  They get to use glue sticks and spell their name...what could be better!  But even if your kids are not into the characters on the Nick Jr. web site, you can still find fun ideas to modify.  It's free to join.  Happy crafting!!