Kids Crafts For July

July 7, 2008

My sister-in-law and I decided to plan a week of fun for the Fourth of July. We planned several fun crafts for our kids. It was a huge success and a great break from the normal day to day blahs of life. I thought you might enjoy hearing about some of them, most of them could be done anytime of year, just by changing the stars to another shape or the colors to non-red, white, blue.

Bracelets...
VERY easy....we used elastic and red, white, and blue beads. We let the kids string their own. They had a lot of fun. Plus isn't this a great motor skill building activity. :)


Tie Dye...
So, so, so fun! Okay, so the kids are probably a little to young for this one, but the adults loved it! All of my siblings made a T-shirt and the kids loved watching and playing in the hose. We are thinking it is going to be an annual tradition, but next year we are going to do a little better research to make sure we find the best dyes and best techniques for washing so our white doesn't turn to pink.


Star Batons...
These were really cute. My sister-in-law and I did all the cutting, but the kids helped us stick them together with glue and tie the ribbon on. We used felt for the stars, a wooden dowel, and ribbon. This could be done with any shape or any colors and the kids had latched on to these things. They are never too far from them. They love waving them around.

Sugar Cookies...
Always a fun one, but can be a lot of work or time consuming, so we bought the already made dough (Pillsbury dough) and then simply rolled it out and cut star shapes. We sprinkled them with read, white, and blue sprinkles. It was great fun and tasted good too! As you will notice there is no picture of this one! They were eaten faster than I could remember to grab my camera. :)

Paper Pinwheels...
We decided to make large ones, just fun fun. They looked so awesome large, but these are seriously SO easy! Square your paper (whatever size you want it, just make sure it is a perfect square) and then cut 2/3's of the way into the center from each of the corners. Then pull every other corner to the middle and put a map tack in the center for holding it and attach it to a wooden dowel. We used scrapbook paper...already the decorated and has fun colors on the back too. Ours didn't even up spinning very well, but they sure looked cute and the kids enjoyed carrying them around.

Have fun crafting!