Learning with Crafts for Kids

Crafts for kids are often just thought of as fun and a great way to spend quality time together. However, crafts can be a great learning experience as well. Children have an amazing way of soaking up all they see, hear and learn. Their minds are eager and willing to learn as much as they can. Of course they always want to have some fun and keep their hands busy as well. That’s why kid’s crafts are the perfect way to incorporate all of it - staying active, having fun and learning. So not only will they have fun, keep busy and learn, but they will have a great item to show off to their friends and family members.

Learning Shapes

Learning shapes is one of the fundamental skills kids learn at an early age. There are shapes in everything around them from circles to triangles. Learning to recognize the different shapes is often one of the first things we teach our kids. They learn it from parents, grandparents and care givers. Here are some simple activity and craft ideas for you to help teach your kids all about the different shapes.

Shapes Wind Chime

Using different household items glue or tie them to a string. Then tie the end of the string to a bamboo stick or BBQ skewer. Hang this outside and not only will your children be able to name the different shapes, but they can hear the different sounds they make.

Some suggestions on household items include lids from jars, old CDs, buttons or even pop cans for the circle and oval shapes. For squares and rectangles you can use plastic knives, an old spatula, an empty animal crackers box and even square or rectangle shaped plastic lids. For other shapes like triangles and hearts, you may have to improvise a bit and cut these out from different items. Simply hang this unique wind chime outside where the kids can look and learn their shapes.

Paper Mache Crafts

Other shapes craft ideas are paper mache crafts. You can make just about any shape you want with old newspapers. Then simply paper mache away and create your fun and messy shapes craft project. These are one of our favorites. It gives the kids time to get really messy and have lots of fun. Simply use some old news papers or any scrap paper. To make the paste add 2 parts flour to one part water. Dip your torn paper into the paste and cover your shapes project. The only draw back to these crafts is the waiting time. You must wait for each layer to dry (about 24 hours) before applying the next layer. Once you are done, let the kids paint their craft with their favorite colors.

Shapes Animals

Have you ever noticed that many animals are made up of different common shapes? Let your kids discover this same thing by making paper shapes animals. Simply cut out some common shapes like circles, ovals, squares, rectangles and triangles. Then have them glue these to a piece of construction paper to form different animals. For instance, using an oval for the body of a dog, a circle for his head, some triangles for the ears, rectangles for the legs and tail, you can have a funny but cute looking dog. Let your kid’s imaginations go wild to create all kinds of animals with just these basic shapes.

Learning Colors

Another basic and early development skill we teach kids is the different colors. Typically we use flash cards or point to different objects and ask them what color is it. Well add a bit of fun to this learning experience with some color crafts for kids. These can be as simple as painting projects, food coloring crafts to fun crafts like a kaleidoscope to show all the fun colors. Here are a few craft ideas for learning colors.

Water Color Collage

Water colors are a great way to learn how primary colors (red, yellow and blue) can make new secondary colors (orange, green and purple). Get some sponges and water colors and a piece of white paper. Let the kids dip the sponge into one of the primary colors and press the sponge onto the paper. While this color is still a bit damp, have them dip another sponge into another primary color and overlap onto the first color. Presto! They now have three colors on their paper – the two primary colors and the new secondary color. You can even mix secondary colors with primary colors to make even new colors. Have the kids repeat pressing the sponge and overlapping until the paper is a neat collage of sponge prints of different colors.

Paper Towel Tie Dye Food Coloring

This is another fun way for kids to learn colors. This one can get a bit messy but will look "groovy""when it's done. Using an eye dropper or straw, place a few drops of food coloring onto a damp paper towel. Then repeat this using a different color and drop onto or near the same area as the first color. Because the paper towel is wet, the colors will spread and blend together to create new colors. Repeat this several times until you have a cool looking tie dyed paper towel. Let it dry and then you can tape it up to display this neat looking color craft.

Rainbow Crafts

Rainbows are fascinating to see with all their bright colors as the sun shines through it. Making a rainbow craft can help kids capture their rainbow and learn all about the different colors. Your rainbow crafts can be as simple as a paper craft to a more complex sun catcher.

No matter what craft idea you use your kids can have fun learning colors, shapes and more. So get crafting and have tons of learning fun. Be sure to check out these rainbow kids crafts for some fun learning colors.