Tag: construction paper

Christmas

Paper Chain Reindeer Craft

Jennifer
Paper Chain Reindeer Craft

This paper chain reindeer craft was easy to make and turned out adorable! It is perfect for preschoolers who want to make Christmas decorations because it doesn’t make much of a mess (outside of glue) and it can be assembled pretty quickly so they don’t lose interest in the activity. For more Christmas crafts, check out my crafts page: https://imaginationsrunningwild.com/preschool-winter-crafts/

Supplies Needed:

Paper chain reindeer craft supplies
  • 1 piece of brown construction paper
  • scissors
  • glue ( we used both a glue stick and white glue)
  • ribbon/yarn
  • goggly eyes
  • small pompom
  • brown or black marker

How To:

Cut your construction paper into 6 equal-sized strips. Mine are 2″ wide x 9″ tall.

reindeer face

Begin by choosing one strip of paper to turn into your reindeer’s face. Make the face first so that the pompom nose can be drying while you assemble the chain. Using your brown or black marker, draw 2 antlers. Then attach your googly eyes. My son really wanted his reindeer to be Rudolph, so he chose a red pompom (size 1.2 cm) for the nose. We used white glue to attach our nose because the glue stick wasn’t sticky enough and our nose kept falling off.

Now it is time to make your chain our of the remaining 5 strips of paper. Fold your first strip of paper into a circle and glue the ends together. Next, take your second strip and stick it through your circle. Glue the ends of the second strip together forming a circle. Repeat this process with the remaining strips of paper until all 5 pieces are connected in a chain. Once your pompom nose is dry, you can add the last of piece of paper with the reindeer face to the top of your chain.

To finish our craft, I tied a red ribbon through the top chain so we hang the paper chain reindeer craft up in our home!

paper chain reindeer craft
Paper Chain Reindeer Craft
Animals

Spouting Whale Craft

Jennifer

Use construction paper and tissue paper to make a spouting whale craft! This was pretty easy to make and lots of fun. Plus good fine motor skills development involved with scrunching up the tissue paper!

Spouting Whale Craft
Spouting Whale

Supplies Needed:

  • white and blue construction paper
  • pencil
  • scissors
  • blue tissue paper ( 1″ x 1″ squares)
  • glue stick
  • white school glue
  • googly eyes

How To:

1. I drew a whale shape on the blue construction paper and cut it out.

2. My son used a glue stick to glue the whale onto the white paper. He made sure to leave some room under the whale so he could add the tissue paper water. Then he rubbed the glue stick all over the bottom of the paper and glued on the blue tissue paper squares to make the ocean water.

3. Together, we wadded up the blue tissue paper squares to make the water spout.

4. Using the white school glue, I added glue dots in the pattern of the whale’s water spout and then my son added the scrunched-up the tissue paper.

5. To complete his craft, my son added the googly eyes. He loves googly eyes and, in his opinion, no craft is complete without them!

Pair this spouting whale craft with Julia Donaldson’s The Snail and the Whale story!

I really like making tissue paper crafts with my son. We’ve made a lot over the years and I’ve shared some on my TISSUE PAPER CRAFTS page if you are looking for more ideas 🙂

Animals, Spring

Bug Crown Craft

Jennifer
Bug Crown Craft

Kids are fascinated by bugs and a bugs theme has always been a hit at the library preschool story-times. My son loves to look around for bugs outside. They are often small and overlooked, but when we take the time to look for them, we are always amazed by how many busy little bugs we find! to encourage his love of bugs, my son and I made this bug crown craft with some of his favorite bugs! I’ve included the bug pictures we used if you would like to use them too.

Supplies Needed:

  • bug pictures template (free PDF download)
  • green construction paper size 9″ x 12″
  • markers or crayons
  • glue stick
  • scissors

How To:

Print out the bug pictures template. Color your bugs and then cut them out.

Cut your sheet of green construction in half (length wise) to form two strips. Glue your bugs onto one of the strips.

Now to make the crown! Glue one side of the strips together. Hold the strips up around your child’s head to measure where to glue the other side of the strips together. I always tell my son to to pinch his paper together where the glue is for a few seconds to help keep the pieces from separating when they are bent. We had to add a little more glue to a couple of the bugs because they started to peel off once the construction paper was in a rounded shape.

Let your project dry. Once your crown is ready to wear, put it on a go on a bug hunt outside. How many bugs can you find?

More Bug Crafts!

Egg Carton Ant: paint an egg carton and add some pipe cleaners to make your own ant craft.

Mosaic Butterfly: make a beautiful mosaic butterfly from scraps of construction paper.

Toilet Paper Roll Bee: your preschooler will love making this cute bee craft out of an empty toilet paper roll!

Easter, Spring

Mosaic Egg Craft

Jennifer
Mosaic Egg Craft

Whether you want this to be cheerful spring egg or an Easter egg, this mosaic egg craft will be a hit with your preschooler. Use this project to help with color identification as you say the name of each color as your glue it on. You can also count how many sides the shapes have too.

Supplies Needed:

  • multiple colors of construction paper*
  • glue stick
  • scissors

*I have a sandwich bag filled with scraps of construction paper that we use for making mosaic crafts. So if you don’t already have small pieces of paper ready to go, cut some out in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors.

How To:

First: Cut your egg shape— pick a color for your egg. We made ours out of white construction paper. The egg shape was large and took up most of the paper.

Second: Making the Mosaic — My son covered his egg in glue from his glue stick, a portion at a time, and added the mosaic paper pieces. He picked a variety of colored mosaic pieces. He had to really work on spatial awareness as he determined which pieces would fit next to each other. In a few instances, I helped trim some pieces for a better fit.

Third: Complete the Project — Once he was happy with the mosaic look of his egg, I flipped the egg over and cut off all of the edges that stuck off the sides of egg. This gave our egg a more rounded look to it.

Now you have an awesome mosaic egg! I think these mosaic eggs are cute decorations for spring and I want my son to make a whole bunch for me. Maybe he could even do one color per egg and I can have a rainbow of eggs 🙂

More Mosaics

If your preschooler enjoyed this mosaic craft and is looking to make more, check out my mosaic butterfly craft! It uses little scraps of paper just like this mosaic egg craft.

My son also made a smiley face out of yellow pieces of paper and a mosaic gingerbread man craft too! Mosaic crafts are a lot of fun and I love how different each one turns out!

Uncategorized

Paper Chain Rainbow Craft

Jennifer

My 3 year old and I made a paper chain rainbow craft for St. Patrick’s Day. This was an easy craft, but was a great opportunity for my child and I to work on color identification and rainbow color order together. We had a lot of fun making this and hope you will too!

Supplies Needed:

  • construction paper in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and black
  • scissors
  • glue
  • ribbon

If you don’t have construction paper, I also made this craft with older kids by painting white paper. Once our paint dried, we cut out our strips to make our chain.

How To:

Cut out a 2 inch x 9 inch strip of paper from each color, except black. Using the black paper, I cut out a pot shape to hold our “gold” coins. I cut a thin strip of black to be able to attach our pot to the chain.

Make your chain: Begin with red. Fold your red piece into a circle and glue the ends together. Next, take your orange piece and stick it through your red circle. Glue the orange ends together forming an orange circle. Now it is yellow’s turn. Take your yellow paper and slip it through the orange circle. Glue the ends of the yellow strip into a circle around the orange, forming your third chain link. Repeat this process with green, blue, and purple. My child saw that we had both light blue and dark blue colored paper and wanted a chain link of each color, so ours has an extra blue. We can just pretend this is our indigo!

pot of gold
pot of gold

Pot of gold: I cut a pot (cauldron) shape out of black construction paper. Then I traced a coin and cut out several yellow circles to be our gold. My son glued the gold onto the pot. To attach the pot to our last chain, I cut a skinny strip of black and made a chain around the purple paper. Then we glued the pot onto the strip. Add a ribbon to the top chain if you would like to hang your craft.

I love how our paper chain rainbow craft turned out! My 3 year old I enjoyed making this together and now we have a cute decoration to put up every St. Patrick’s Day. We also made a tissue paper rainbow craft together too 🙂

rainbow chain craft
Uncategorized

Cut the Vines Scissor Skills Activity

Jennifer

Cut the vines and free the toy! This a fun scissor skills activity for preschoolers to practice cutting. Preschoolers love using scissors, so let’s give them constructive opportunities to practice cutting. I told my 3 year old son that the dinosaur was trapped in the vines and that he had to save him! I gave him scissors and told him to carefully cut the vines off and free the dinosaur. He really enjoyed this scissor skills activity and took his job of freeing the dino so seriously!

cut the vines and free the toy scissor skills activity supplies: plastic toy, green paper, scissors, and tape.
supplies

To do this activity you will need green construction paper, tape, safety scissors, and a plastic toy that won’t get damaged from scissors.

1. First cut the green construction paper into strips to be the vines. Mine were roughly 1/2 inch wide.

2. Wrap the vines loosely around the plastic toy and tape the ends of the vines hold them in place. I used a dinosaur because I like that it had legs and a tail that I could wrap the vine around.

Dino wrapped in vines

3. Have your preschooler free the toy from the vines by cutting the vines off!

free the dino

Yay, the toy is free! Great job using scissors!

Another scissor skills activity that I did with my son was a Paper Plate Hedgehog Craft. He got to use his scissors and cut the plate to the make the hedgehog’s quills! This craft was easy to pull together, but tons of fun.

Animals, Valentine's Day

“Bee Mine” Craft

Jennifer
"Bee Mine" Craft
“Bee Mine” Craft

Valentine’s Day crafts are so much fun! I love all of the puns 🙂 Make this “Bee Mine” craft with your preschooler and give it to someone special or make it part of your Valentine Day decorations!

Supplies Needed:

  • construction paper
  • scissors
  • glue stick
  • crayon or marker
  • white tissue paper

How To:

First pick a back a ground color for your project. Since my son wants to give it to his Grammy for Valentine’s Day, he picked pink paper. Next, cut out a medium sized oval and smaller circle from yellow paper to make your bee.

Glue your oval and circle onto the background paper. Now you have your bee’s body. Draw on the black stripes and the stinger. For the face, give your bee 2 large eyes, a sweet little smile, and draw on the antennae.

To really make this craft Valentine’s Day themed, cut out 2 heart shapes for wings. We used white tissue paper for our wings and my son loved how they looked on the bee! Since the tissue is delicate, we put the glue on the paper and then gently pressed our heart-shaped wings down on the glue. To finish the craft, my son wrote “Bee Mine” and he drew a heart on the top of his paper. Now the craft is finished and ready to give to someone special!

More Valentine Crafts:

My son and I have made a lot of Valentine’s Day crafts and we are sharing some of our favorites with you! We have cute animals, more puns, and lots of hearts for you to make.

–Heart Dog Craft: print off the template, color the hearts, and assemble them to form a dog.

–Wooly Sheep: Say “I Wooly Love You” with this cute pom-pom sheep craft!

–Lacing Heart: work on fine motor skills with this fun lacing heart craft.

–Heart Wand: make this super cute heart want and sprinkle love around!

Valentine's Day

Smiley Face Craft

Jennifer
Mosaic smiley face craft

I love this happy, mosaic smiley face craft! It is perfect for giving to a friend or family member. While I had originally come up with for my son to mail to his friend, with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I think it would make a great Valentine too! Mosaic crafts are a great way to use all of those little extra pieces of construction paper leftover from other crafts. Plus these crafts are great for fine motor skills, shape recognition, and spatial awareness too.

Supplies Needed:

How To:

Print out the “You Make Me Smile” sheet if you’d like to use my template. Otherwise, draw a large circle on a piece of paper.

Now it is time to make all of the little mosaic pieces. Cut the construction paper into a variety of shapes. I have a sandwich bag full of extra scraps of paper that I keep for mosaic crafts, so my son just pulled out the pieces he wanted. Having lots of different shapes and sizes to choose from helped him get the look he wanted without having to use pieces that didn’t fit well. So if you are cutting them specifically for this project, cut some extras so that there are lots of choices for your kiddo. I had to round a few edges for him since our craft is circular.

Now that you have your pieces of paper ready, glue them all over your paper to make your yellow face. Let your mosaic pieces dry.

Paint 2 eyes and a smile on your face. I like to use Crayola Washable Paints. These paints are so easy to wash off of my son’s hands, the paintbrush, and our table.

Let your mosaic smiley face craft dry before giving your project to a friend or family member!

I’ve joined Amazon’s Affiliate program to try and help cover the costs of this site. So if you buy something through one of my links on Amazon, then I get a small percentage of the sale (no extra cost to you). Thank you for your support! Happy crafting 🙂

Valentine's Day

Hug Craft

Jennifer
paper hug craft
Paper Hug Craft

I LOVE this hug craft! It’s my son’s actual arms and handprints! I hung this in my office so I could always have a hug. This craft turned out so great, and it is pretty simple to make!

Supplies Needed:

  • 3 different colors of construction paper
  • scissors
  • pencil
  • glue

How To:

Pick 3 different colored pieces of construction paper. We ended up with primary colors, but any colors you pick will make a great hug.

I asked my son to lay his hands and arms across the blue paper and I traced their outlines. Then I cut them out. Next, I cut out a heart shape from the red paper. I wanted the heart to be large enough so that it could be seen under the hands, but not so big that it took up all of the space.

My son glued the heart to the middle of the yellow paper. Next he glued one hand on the heart, with the arm at a downward facing angle. Then glued the arm down. The blue arm paper is longer than the yellow paper, so fold it and glue it to the back of the yellow sheet. This makes it look like the arm is wrapping around, giving a hug.

He glued the second hand slightly on top of the first hand and glued down the arm portion. Like the first arm, he had to fold it and finish gluing it to the back of the yellow paper.

Once it’s dry, you have this awesome hug to take to work or mail to a family member.

Check out my Crafts Page for more things to make with your kiddo! Here is a list of HUG Stories to read with this craft.

Christmas, Winter

Candy Cane Craft

Jennifer
candy cane craft
Candy Cane Craft

This candy cane craft is cute and easy for toddlers and preschoolers to make. I loved that I had all of the supplies we needed at home already. Plus, my kiddo loves using glue, so he was excited to make this craft! All-in-all, this craft was a great Christmassy way to fun with my son.

Supplies Needed:

You don’t need very many supplies so you can dive right into crafting! You will need:

-Red construction paper

-Scissors

-Cotton balls (ours were a small size)

-Glue stick

OPTIONAL: my son added googly eyes and drew on a smile with a pen

How To:

Step 1: First cut out a candy cane shape. Mine was nearly as tall as my paper and about 1 1/2 inches wide. You can make yours whatever size you want. I think the wider the candy cane craft is, the easier is is for kids to glue on the cotton balls.

Step 2: Put a line of glue across the candy cane to make your first cotton ball stripe. For younger kiddos, just glue on cotton balls; for older kiddos, stretch the cotton balls out to make the craft more interactive.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 until you have enough white stripes along your candy cane!

Step 4: Optional–add googly eyes and draw on a mouth. My son says adding googly eyes make every craft more fun!

Step 5: Let your candy cane dry before showing it off 😀

More Crafts!

Paper Plate Peppermint: a cute and festive, winter handprint craft to make with your preschooler.

Christmas Cookie Cutter Coloring: a fun way to use cookie cutters without the calories! Trace your cookie cutters like stencils to design paper cookies.