7 Amazing Craft Ideas

Easy-to-follow classroom projects to inspire your students

Grades

PreK–K, 1–2, 3–5,6–8

 

Make bookmarks, puppets, origami boxes, story dice, noisemakers, paper flowers, and more with these classroom craft ideas your students will love. Click on each craft's title for the full details!

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Colorful Fall Leaves

Put away the waxed paper and Vaseline and bring out the coffee filters and markers to create a twist on autumn leaf projects. Kids can use their imagination to fashion leaves of pink and purple and mint green. Bonus: Take young explorers on a nature walk to gather branches and add a hands-on science lesson to this fun, fall craft project. Click here.

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Mosaic Pumpkins

 

1 handy template + a handful of multi-colored beans = a fun and easy pumpkin project kids will love! Simply cut out the template and mount on card stock, ­leaving ¼-inch trim. Glue dried beans, peas, and lentils in desired pattern, and voilà, a pumpkin of another color! Click here.

• Fall Craft Templates (Pumpkin, Turkey, & Leaf)

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"All About Me" Hats

Gather a variety of hats (kids can bring their own), as well as scraps of fabric and ribbon, stickers, small trinkets and toys, and magazine and newspaper clippings. Have students choose a hat and then decorate it in a way that reflects them, using school glue or a glue stick to affix items. Wear your new hats at a getting-to-know-you class hat party! Click here. 
 

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Memory Mailbox

Welcome the new school-year by creating a “memory mailbox” to document all of the fun times ahead.  Each Friday, students write notes and drop them in the box. Open at year’s end for a back-to-school activity that comes full circle. Click here.

 

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Mini-Garden Keepsake

Celebrate the end of the year with a gift that will keep on growing. Help kids craft mini-gardens out of recycled plastic bags, fabric scraps, and ribbons. Fill each DIY satchel with a half cup of soil and a sprinkle of wildflower seeds. Kids can then scatter their garden-to-go in the backyard or a soil-filled container, water frequently, and watch flowers bloom through the summer. Click here.

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Quilt of Knowledge

Have students share advice with next year’s class by decorating templates with sketches, poems, and stories recounting favorite classroom memories. Glue templates to colored paper and use yarn to tie it all together. Click here.

Download the Wisdom Quilt Template from Instructor Magazine

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Recycled Egg-Carton Flowers

Watch young artists blossom as they transform egg cartons into colorful flowers. Work with kids to cut out petals and centers, then paint in bright shades. Add pipe-cleaner stems for a one-of-a-kind springtime bouquet.

Watch Instructor magazine's resident crafter Jim Noonan demonstrate this craft:

KIDS ARTS AND CRAFTS ACTIVITIES :: OVER 500 FUN, ARTFUL THINGS FOR KIDS TO DO

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Looking for an art activity to do with your kids? You’ve come to the right place! You can find over 500 kids arts and crafts activities and ideas here on The Artful Parent.

If you’re looking for a specific material or technique you can search by category below—three top posts from each category are highlighted and you can click the “more” button or the category header to go to the page dedicated to that material. There are between 30 and 70 activities in most of the categories listed, so you should find lots of ideas to explore if you just want to poke around and get inspired!

500+ KIDS ARTS AND CRAFTS ACTIVITIES

art and craft..................

arts and crafts, term for that general field of applied design in which hand fabrication is dominant. The term was coined in England in the late 19th cent. as a label for the then-current movement directed toward the revivifying of the decorative arts. The chief influence behind this movement was William Morris. By the mid-19th cent., factory processes had almost entirely driven artisans from their ancient trades and threatened to obliterate the techniques they used to produce beautiful objects of utility. The Gothic revival, however, had brought into existence a great body of knowledge concerning the arts of the Middle Ages, and Morris, together with the Pre-Raphaelite painters and a small group of architects and designers, returned to these arts as a rich source of inspiration.

The pupils and followers of Morris multiplied, and proficient artisans developed. Their methods aimed at a practical demonstration not only of Morris's aesthetic creed but also of his ideas concerning socialism and the moral need for integrating beauty with the accessories of daily life. The aesthetic and political aspects of the arts and crafts movement influenced the development of modernism, particularly as they were later reflected in the core philosophy of the Bauhaus. The revival of folk arts has continued to prosper in some quarters, especially in remote communities and among Native Americans of the Southwest and the Eskimos (see North American Native Art).

A less aestheticized version of the arts and crafts movement was important in the United States, where it spread from England and flourished from the late 19th cent. to about 1915. It was prominent in American architecture and design, notably in the buildings and interiors of Greene and Greene and in the "mission-style" oak furniture of Gustav Stickley (1858–1942) and his contemporaries. The movement's precepts were also applied to ceramics, glassware, utensils, and other objects of American daily life. The arts and crafts movement also spread to continental Europe, where it was quite influential during the late 19th and early 20th cent.