Preschool Crafts

This morning I held a Preschool Craft program for ages 3-6.  This is an important age group to remember because many of these kids do not fit into our baby and toddler story times and are too young for our school age programs.  You wouldn't think so, but it is one of our hardest age groups to schedule here.  We registered 20 kids to come in and do an assortment of fall crafts.  Fall in Michigan means mild temperatures and colorful leaves.  On the morning of the program, we woke up to this:

I guess that fall now means snow.  We had three crafts set up at three different stations.  Supplies and examples were set out at each table so kids could work on these projects with little adult "assistance".

"Before" picture

Craft 1: Colorful Trees

This station required stamp pads in red, yellow, orange, and brown, a paper with a tree trunk drawn on it, and baby wipes.  Kids use their fingers to make the leaves by putting them in ink, then on the paper.  If you do something similar, look for inexpensive washable ink as kids like to mix the colors and the stamp pads may not be reusable.

I put brown craft paper down on the table as there were a lot of ink prints that ended up on the craft paper.  This makes it much easier to clean up!

Craft 2: Leaf Wreathes

For this station, we used paper plates with the middles cut out, glue sticks, die cut leaves, and a piece of yarn to hang the wreath.

Craft 3: Turkeys

This station was my favorite as it was neat to see what the kids' designs.  We used colored tissue paper squares and glued them onto half of a paper plate.  If you do this, it helps if you put the glue on the plate, not on the tissue paper.  When they finished their "feathers", they took a plastic baggie that included all of their turkey parts.  They glued these onto the turkey to create their finished product.

While the snow made some people cancel for today's program, we still ended up with a good sized group.  Almost all of them left the program asking when we could do this again!

Very Hungry Caterpillar Craft

Last Wednesday we celebrated The Very Hungry Caterpillar's birthday with a special story and craft time.  We did two crafts after the kids listened to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  There are a lot of great craft ideas out there, but we were looking for ones that could be made by 3-6 year olds in about 10 minutes.  First, we made caterpillar headbands.  Then we made caterpillars out of tissue paper.

How to make tissue paper caterpillars:
Supplies
-1 8 1/2x11 piece of white paper
-4 green tissue paper circles (I like to raid our dish cupboard to make circles-coffee mugs and bowls work great.)
-1 red tissue paper circle
-Crayons or markers
-Glue stick

1.  Glue your tissue paper circles onto the paper.  If you glue them in a straight line, you will have a short caterpillar of three or so circles.  If you give him an "s" shape, you will fit more circles on the paper and he will look more like a caterpillar.

2.  With crayons or markers, add a face and legs.  You can also add other details, such as a sun, grass, etc.

While it would have been easier using construction paper circles, I like the look of tissue paper when doing an Eric Carle craft.  It gives the finished product the look of Carle artwork, while still being accessible to a 3-6 year old.

Very Hungry Caterpillar Headband

As a children's librarian, I love Pinterest.  When I have a program to plan and need some ideas, it is my "go-to" place to start.  We are doing a special story time next Wednesday to celebrate The Very Hungry Caterpillar's birthday, but needed some craft ideas for preschoolers.  After searching Pinterest, I found this picture, but there was no pattern.  This morning I designed a pattern from the picture and cut out pieces for our program.  Here's what I came up with:

 

We started with a 4-inch wide headband.  I like to use a paper clip to close it up, because young kids tend to take them frequently off and on.  The paperclip gives the headband some give.

 

 

Then I added yellow and green circles for his eyes and purple antennae.  I think that it ended up looking cute and can't wait to see all of our little "caterpillars".  Stop by next week for more info from the program.



Handprint Christmas Trees

My nieces (and now 1 nephew) and I have always tried to come up with a Christmas gift that they all can work on that we can pass out to the aunts, uncles, and grandparents on Christmas Eve.  This year we decided to make handprint Christmas trees.

Supplies Needed

• We used an 11x17 canvas from Michaels because they sold them in a 7-pack and the size was big enough for everyone's hands.
• Paint-green, brown, yellow, red, purple, blue, orange
• Paper plates
• Baby wipes
• Ultra fine point Sharpie

We started this project on a day when all of the kids were at Nana's house.  Green paint was spread on a paper plate and each kid dipped their hand in paint and added it to the tree.  Our family is kind of large so we needed to paint five canvases.  Then we set them aside to dry.  This year we learned that babies don't always like to dip their hands into paint so it helps if you have a paint brush handy so you can paint their hand as you spread out their fingers.

 

On a different day, one of my nieces and I sat down and finished the pictures.  I added stars to the top of the trees and trunks to the bottom.

 



We added a garland to each tree using our fingerprints.

 

My niece had a great time adding ornaments in different colors.  You will want baby wipes handy as they are great for wiping fingers in between the colors.

 

 

I am kind of impressed by how they turned out!  We are going to take an Ultra Fine Point Sharpie and label each hand and add "2012" to the side of the canvas.  This weekend the girls will wrap the paintings and decide who gets what and we will pass them out for Christmas.

Shape Clifford Craft

We are preparing to celebrate Clifford's 50th birthday this February with a big birthday party.  While it is slow over the holidays, I came up with this pattern.  I like it because it uses shapes to create Clifford's face.

Supplies Needed:

• 2 pieces of red paper
• 1 piece of black paper
• 1 piece of pink paper
• 1 piece of white paper
• 1 glue stick
• Shape Clifford pattern

When making them with a group of toddlers or preschoolers, I precut all of the pieces so the kids just have to glue.

Chocolate Handprint Reindeer

One of our biggest activities of the year is making chocolate handprint reindeer ornaments in December. 

 

Supplies Needed:

• White cardstock circles for handprints.  We have a circle cutter that makes 6 inch circles that works great.
• With a group this size, we use 3 large boxes of chocate pudding.  Make it according to the directions on the box (so you will need a gallon of milk too).
• Disposable foil trays to hold the chocolate pudding
• 3 rolls of ribbon for hanging
• Sticker eyes
• Red circle stickers (We use Avery #5466)
• 2 rolls of paper towels
• 1 package of baby wipes
• A couple of brown crayons
• Access to a laminator

Registration:
With 2 librarians, we run through 80-90 kids comfortably in three hours. I would encourage registration. We stagger the registration times by age every thirty minutes. For example, 9 & 9:30 are 0-24 months, 10 & 10:30 are 2-3 year olds, and 11 & 11:30 are 3-6 year olds. By doing it this way, you can keep the group smaller with the babies, who will need more help (we run 10 in a time slot) and increase the attendance for the older kids (15 3 year olds). Since we do registration, we have an Avery address label already printed up with each child's name and the date that we put on the back of each circle.

Also, if you advertise the program, make sure you use "chocolate pudding" in the program description.  Some children with food allergies will not be able to do the project (or you can pull out brown crayons for them to make their "hand").

How the Program Works:
The kids come in and make their handprints using chocolate pudding.  We let each child make 1 print.  (Some of the moms will ask to redo them because they don't always look like hands, but once you add eyes and a nose, it will look great.)  We lay all of the circles out to dry.  Some will be done in an hour, but many will take 12-24 hours.

On the staff side, we add sticker eyes and a nose when the pudding is dry.  The circles are run through laminator, a hole is punched in the top, and a ribbon is strung through to create an ornament.  When we advertise the event, we also advertise a pick-up day that is 4 days later so we can get our part done.

Why we do this:
First, this is a lot of fun.  As kids make their handprints, you can also suggest to parents that chocolate pudding is a great way to fingerpaint at home (trust me, they love new ideas).  Secondly, as kids pull out their ornament year after year, they will remember that they made it at the library.  It is a great plug for us!

Miscellaneous Stuff:

• You will want a couple of brown crayons for kids with food allergies or those who don't want to get dirty.  We were really surprised last year when kids did not want to put their hands in chocolate pudding (about 1/10 of the kids).
• When trying to get the kids to put their hand in chocolate pudding, we told them to make a "high-five" in the pudding and then on the circle.  They understood this much better than their mom telling them to spread out their fingers.
• The gloppier the chocolate pudding on the handprint, the longer it will take to dry.  If you are in a hurry, you can either blot the glops with paper towel or use a plastic spoon to scrape some off before it starts to dry.
• If you use a hot laminator and there are glops, the pudding can melt and spread.

For some additional fun, here are some of the handprints that my nieces have made over the years!  After awhile, you do run out of room on your Christmas tree.

Bunny Hop

With Easter right around the corner, we held a Bunny Hop this week for 3-6 year olds.  As the kids come in, they picked up their nametags.  These were bunny ear headbands with the first name's written across the band.

We started off the program by reading Little White Rabbit by Kevin Henkes.  We did the Bunny Hop (on Disney's More Dancin' Tunes cd) and the Bunny Pokey (on Holiday Pigggyback Songs cd).  We passed out die cut bunnies and did the following rhyme (I admit it, I "borrowed" this from another branch):

There's a Little Bunny

(to the tune of Happy and You Know It)

There's a little bunny sitting on my toe,

There's a little bunny sitting on my toe,

He is sitting on my toe, then off away he goes,

There is no little bunny on my toe.

There's a little bunny sitting on my knee,

There's a little bunny sitting on my knee,

He is sitting on my knee, just watch and he will flee,

There is no little bunny on my knee.

There's a little bunny sitting on my head,

There's a little bunny sitting on my head,

He is sitting on my head, then away he goes to bed,

There is no little bunny on my head.

Next, we divided the kids in half so they could rotate through two craft stations.  At our first we made bunny paper bags.

Click here to download the bunny paper bag ears and mouth. (Note-the ears can also be used for the bunny headbands.)  To make bunny paper bags, first color the middle of the ears pink.  Cut out the ears and glue onto the top half of the white paper bag.  Cut out the mouth and glue near the bottom of the bag.  We used a 1 inch circle punch to make the pink noses.  The whiskers are cut out of black construction paper and are about 1/4 inch by 3 inches.  Glue the nose and whiskers to the bag above the mouth.  Draw eyes on the bag.  Add a cotton ball tail to the back of the bag with glue. 

To make the bunny paper cups, we started by shrinking down our bunny ears a lot.  Color the inside of the ears, cut them out, and glue to the back of the white paper cup.  We found peel and stick googly eyes at Michaels (my new favorite product!).  Stick the eyes about 1/3 the way down from the top of the cup.  The whiskers are cut into 1 inch pieces out of white pipe cleaners.  We put a 3-D glue dot where the nose should go and fit the 4 whiskers and mini pink pom pom on top of it.  To give it some color, we added pink or green Easter grass to the inside of the cup.

The Bunny Hop turned out really well and we would definitely do it again.