Craft activities for toddlers are a fun way to keep them busy, distract them from demands for the screen, or help them get their sensory fill for the day. Engaging them in craft activities is one of the quickest and most effective ways to keep them occupied and away from mischief.
This is also a good way to encourage the toddler’s creativity and imagination. It is very clear that toddlers too enjoy a lot when handed blank sheets of paper and some colors – be it finger paints, crayons, or water colors. The sheer joy they derive from indulging in such activities is a pure joy to watch. Let’s explore some easy craft activities for your toddler to do.
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Importance of Craft Activities For Toddlers
Creative activities help toddlers’ brain development in more than one way. They use their hands and mind both, while doing stuff like- mixing colors, using glue, making swirls with paint or paper. They exercise important developmental skills and at the same time also gain independence making something of their own.
Doing craft activities also helps increase the attention span of a toddler. Craft time not only improves their creativity but helps them focus on one thing for longer. It helps both gross and fine motor skills development in toddlers. Based on an info provided by ResearchGate, Craft activities also teach toddlers to cooperate as doing these activities require a lot of cooperation. Even when a toddler doesn’t follow the instructions entirely and does their own thing, they achieve a lot just by using the material and creating something.
List of Top 7 Craft Activities For Toddlers
When picking craft activities for your toddler, it’s best to choose a simple one. Selecting something that has just a few steps is more appropriate for this age group. Complex or difficult craft work could make toddlers lose interest or focus and, in some cases, even make them frustrated. The material used should also not be too small in size to handle. Also take care that they don’t ingest anything being used for the activity. Here are a few craft activities for toddler, which will keep them engrossed –
1. Leaf Painting
This is an all-time favorite craft activity for a toddler as it also includes gallivanting outdoors and collecting things. Take a walk with your toddler and encourage them to pick leaves of different sizes and shapes. Once they have their collection, give them some paint, a brush and ask them to paint the leaves.
Apply a generous amount of paint on the leaf and then turn it around and press it firmly on whatever surface you pick for the activity – drawing paper, newspaper, or a card box. Help the toddler press every part of the leaf on the surface so that even the veins of the leaf show up. This activity will help them explore different textures and material, and will also work on their fine motor skills.
[Read : Top 10 Shape Activities and Games For Toddlers to Teach Shapes]
2. Paper Cup Flower Craft
Making paper cup flowers involves cutting the paper cup’s sides, so you will need to step in to help with that step even if the toddler has safe scissors.
For this activity, you need a paper cup. Add some paint inside the cup – it could be added in the middle or on the sides of the cup. Then put a round stone inside the cup and swirl it. This will make the color splash around making a design. Then cut the sides of the cup in strips till the bottom. These strips will make the petals of the flower.
As an added step, you can even poke a hole in the base of the cup and then use a ribbon or a wool string to tie two to three cups together to make a design. This craft activity will work on building a toddler’s fine motor skills, and will strengthen their hands as well. Using scissors will enhance their bilateral coordination.
3. Felt-Board Tree Craft
For this craft activity, you need a cardboard piece – you can take a box of biscuits, cereals, or amazon delivery boxes, whatever is available. Paste a felt paper base on it. Using blue felt paper on it makes for a neutral background. You could also paste green felt for the land in the bottom part of the board. This could also be white if the toddler wants to make a snow base.
Now using different colored felt papers, cut out whatever shapes are needed – tree trunk, foliage, leaves, flowers, snow, or even birds and tree animals. Felt sticks on its own without the need of any glue, so you could just provide all the cut outs to the toddlers and let them decorate the tree as they want.
This craft activity for toddler helps in hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills development and dexterity. It’s a great way to learn about nature, and bolsters imagination in toddlers. It also helps in enhancing vocabulary and language skills in toddler as they learn new words by this.
4. Torn Paper Snowflakes
This activity is comparatively easy, and will be fun for a toddler. To do this, give the toddler a white or a blue sheet of paper and ask them to rip it into small pieces. Then on a white sheet, draw a big snowflake. After this, using a glue stick cover the image bit by bit, and ask your toddler to stick the torn paper pieces onto the surface, creating a snowflake.
To make it even more fun, you could even take a newspaper and let the toddler paint it blue or white. Newspapers are always lying around to be used in some way, and toddlers love tearing them into pieces anyway. After painting, let them tear these into small pieces and then stick onto the drawing sheet to complete the snowflake.
This activity improves hand-eye coordination in toddler and fosters a sense of independence in them too. It is also great for fine motor skills development.
5. Rainbow Threading Craft
This threading activity can be done using colorful fruit cereal or colored rings. This craft serves as a great project for toddlers to work on their fine motor skills and even hand eye coordination. They need to pick small sized cereal and then draw a thread through them to make a necklace. During prep work for the activity, they would also hone their grouping and sorting skill as they sift through the bowl of cereal to segregate different colors.
To begin, get all the material together – fruit cereal of different colors, a wool yarn or a string, and a plastic yarn needle. If available, you could also keep two marshmallows. After the cereal has been grouped by colors, take the needle and thread through one piece of the marshmallow – this makes one end and will keep the cereal in place. Once this is stable, help the toddler thread the cereal color by color.
You could even count the cereal as the toddler puts them in. After all the cereal is threaded, add another marshmallow at the other end to finish the thread or the necklace. This craft activity helps toddlers work on a range of skills, and at the same time keeps them busy.
6. Bubble Art
For this craft activity, you need to create the color at home. It is a mix of water, dish soap, food coloring, and some corn syrup (this is optional but helps thicken the solution a bit). The more food colors you can arrange the more vibrant the art will be.
Keep each colored solution in a separate mug and help your toddler blow into the cup using a straw. Blow until the bubbles are coming all the way up beyond the rim of the cup. Place a paper on it and let the bubble burst on it creating different patterns. Repeat this with each color to create different colored art.
Alternatively, after creating the bubble solution, you could also give your toddlers a ringed spoon to swirl in the solution and then blow bubbles out on the paper by blowing on the ring part. The bubble will leave a pattern on the paper as it bursts.
This activity helps build a toddler’s vocabulary and language skills, along with fine motor skills. It also enhances their observational skills and boosts creativity and curiosity.
[Read : Bubble Play For Babies]
7. Painted Pasta Necklace Craft
The best kind of pasta for this craft activity for your toddler are the ones through which you could thread a string or wool, like penne, rigatoni, and macaroni. Before starting the activity, it’s good to color the pasta. For this, take two to three ziplock bags and put pasta in them. Now pour a different color in each bag and shake it well. It helps to coat all the pasta pieces in color. Let it dry.
Once dried, this pasta is ready to be used. Settle your toddler with the colored pasta and a piece of wool or string, depending on the length of the necklace that you want. You could thread the string into a yarn needle or even tie it to a toothpick. This can be used to thread through the pasta pieces until the end. You will need to tie the ends to finish the necklace.
This activity not only works on your toddler’s fine motor skills, it also aids in hand-eye coordination. It also develops their concentration and enhances their vocabulary and creativity as they learn about different colors etc.
These craft activities for toddler, engage their sense of touch, smell, and sight, making a huge impact on their development. Sensory play is at the core of learning and engagement during early years of a kid. The toddlers are, however, not as agile and dexterous and will go on to make a lot of mess and ask for help. But that’s exactly the point of these activities. To learn through colorful mess and end up with a final product that they are proud of. They will also get a feeling of having done something on their own. This goes a long way in encouraging them, feeling good about themselves, and boosting their self-esteem.
FAQ’s
1. What Are the Benefits of Craft Activities For Toddler?
Craft activities help to develop fine motor skills, concentration, organizational skills in toddler. They also help to cultivate independence, confidence, self-esteem, and patience in them. Craft activities also foster creativity, imagination and self-expression in your little one.
Read Also: Top 10 Color Activities and Games For Toddlers to Teach Colors
