Crafty People!!

I want to do some kid friendly crafts with my daycare kids. Anybody have some good idea's or websites with kids crafts? I need crafts for all age groups! Thanks!!

Jackie

If I were you I would have a structured craft day and run with that daily theme. For instance, Monday might be a food craft, decorating cookies, or baking a cake, cupcakes, sandwich cut outs.

Tuesday could be make a substance day like play dough one week, silly putty one week, pudding paintings.

You can't go wrong with popsicle sticks and glue.

Pictures of the kids in frames made of just about anything.

Hit up oriental trading, they sell kits with stuff for a specific craft. 

Also shrinky dinks are very popular, as long as you get the plastic and have a toaster oven

Then there are those bead things where there is a mold and you put little plastic beads on it and then you iron them on the top and they melt together.  I worked at summer camp this summer and my kids effin loved these.

Check out crayola.com, I get a lot of great stuff from there. Also there is a great  book called Great American Artist for Kids. It has an artist and a craft. The great thing is they show the craft for all older kids and then they show how you do it for younger kids.  Also you could go a different route and set up stations. You could have an art easels with washable paint. They have brushes now that the paint is stored in.  Or you could use washable makers.  You could have a play dough station. A station for just cutting for 3 and 4 year olds. It is a really important motor-skill to develop. I could go on forever. I home school my kids and I use to teach preschool.  PM if you want more ideas.

Well...kinda cheesy ideas but I remember doing them as a kid and they were cheap and you can kinda tie in the seasonal.holiday things...

Pumpkin Cutouts with construction paper and put the kids photo in the center and have them decorate around it with things like glued on candy corns, stickers, etc
We used to also cut tissue paper into squares, twist it over end of a pencil, dab in glue, and then put on the paper and you can do colors like orange, yellow, red and in the end it makes a float type design.

Turkeys using the trace of the hands kid...thumb is the head and other fingers are the tail, body is the palm....

Macaroni or colored spiral pasta to decorate a popsicle stick pic frame

Animals made out of styrofoam cups...the first one flipped upside down is the body and the other glued horitzontal on top for the head...you can do a dog, pig, horse..since it will make like a snout...kids can color the, use pipe cleaner, markers, googly eyes to jazz it up

Take an empty jar and layer it with colored sands to sort of make a cool design, seal jar, decorate with ribbon, fabric, etc

Hobby lobby, Michaels, etc also have cool kids crafts kits too!

You might want to look into Mother Goose Time, its an entire preschool curriculum.  As a teacher and a mom, I like it!
-Donna

I was in charge of kids day at our city picnic one year. We did paper plate masks.  Ahead of time I hot glued paper plates to large popsicle sticks  - cut out eye holes with a circle trimmer.

Give em a bunch of stuff to glue on. Feathers, ears, yarn (for wiskers) all sorts of stuff. The kids LOVED it! :)

joann.com has some great ideas too

Have fun!