Crafts for Toddlers

Often parents find working on craft ideas for toddlers a waste of time and effort. They often wait till their child is older, to start off with craft activities. However, crafts for toddlers have loads of positive effects on children. These type of activities not only promote hand-eye coordination and stimulates their creativity, but also help toddlers build a positive self image. It assists in overall child development. Several parents have testified to the fact that after implementing kids crafts, their kids argued and fussed less. Moreover, disciplining them also became a lot easier.

Various Crafts Ideas For Toddlers
One can use craft activities to introduce the alphabets, nursery rhymes, festivals or national holidays to toddlers. Toddlers love craft activities as it gives them the opportunity to practically understand the task set up for them, and they can act independently. The different ideas that one can adopt are:

Letter Activities:
Alphabet A: This activity dwells on the short A sound only. To teach the alphabet A, one can adopt the thumb print ant activity. This activity requires a marker, plain sheet of construction paper and black washable stamp pad. On the construction paper, one is to draw an ant hill using the marker. Next, have the child press his/her thumb into the stamp pad and make a thumb print onto the construction paper. After several thumb prints are made, one can use the marker to draw 6 legs, eyes, etc for the thumb print ants. The child is to be allowed to draw ants wherever he or she wishes within the ant hill.

Alphabet B: To teach the letter B, one can make use of fingerprint bumble bee activity. All one needs for this activity is one sheet of construction paper and yellow and black washable stamp pads. This activity is loved by toddlers as they love getting messy at this age. For the bee's body, one needs to press the child's thumb into the yellow stamp pad and get an imprint onto the paper. For the stinger, body stripes and head, press the child's little finger into the black stamp pad and make tiny dots on the yellow body. For the wings one should dip the child's index finger in black paint and make imprints on some scrap paper. When most of the paint is gone, one should stamp a wing at a slight angle to the body. The second wing is to be stamped at an opposite angle.

Nursery Rhyme Themes:
These nursery rhyme activities are great to teach nursery rhymes, like, 'twinkle twinkle little stars', 'baa baa black sheep', 'humpty dumpty', etc.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star: To teach twinkle twinkle little star, one can make a shooting star. For the shooting star, one should draw a five point star on construction paper. Draw another smaller star and cut it out. These templates are to be used to draw stars on felt paper of different colors and cut them out. Take six eight inch strands of ribbon of different colors and staple them together at one end. Next lay the bigger star and glue the stapled ribbons to its center. Spread adequate amount of glue on the large star and paste the smaller star onto it. Once dried, one is to make a hole in the top and thread a ribbon piece through it, so as to use it as a hanger.

Baa Baa Black Sheep: In order to teach the nursery rhyme 'baa baa black sheep' in an interesting manner, one can try out the cotton ball sheep activity. All one needs for this activity is a sheep printout, some cotton balls and glue. Show the child how to dip the cotton ball into the glue and paste it onto the sheep template. Children find pasting activities a lot of fun.

Besides the above mentioned crafts for toddlers, there are several other activities that one can try out. Toddlers enjoy coloring, therefore one can buy loads of coloring pages and crayons to keep them busy. You can use any one interesting activity to teach each alphabet or nursery rhyme. One can be creative and introduce different crafts for toddlers, making learning fun for these tiny tots. For more ideas on crafts for toddlers, check out these craft ideas for toddlers and have fun while your toddlers enjoy messing up themselves!