Arts and crafts with the kids - ideas please

Jagraf

Decorate rich tea biscuits with icing sugar and sweets. This was great 'cooking' but made a bit of a mess

amistupid

Potato printing!



As this is an MSE site, if the paint's non toxic, I suppose you could do them coloured mash for tea.

REEN

Origami is fun. Little ones can make the basic shapes which can have faces drawn on to make dragons or make those "fortune tellers" kids like, and the older ones can make the more elaborate things.

Outdoors they could make miniature gardens in seed trays or boxes. Put in a layer of soil, give them small stones to make paths, twigs for trees, jam jar lids for ponds etc.

rebeccatom

collect different size cardboard boxes, brown tape and make something. The other weekend we made a train big enough for the kids to drive, they loved it. the internet has loads of good ideas and templates for cardboard models
Or if that seems too hard, argos and amazon sell a number of different cardboard activities which are easily put together and you can have fun painting them. There are playhouses, rockets, areoplanes

Lunar_Eclipse

Coloured chalk (draw pictures on your back patio, ideally not pavement though they do wash away easily with water.)

Make nature pictures outside with twigs, moss, leaves etc. Or with pebbles and shells at the beach.

T-shirt painting with supermarket value t-shirts (back to school) and fabric pens.

Design and decorate a musical instrument out of cardboard boxes, elastic bands, plastic tubing & funnel etc.

Buy some photo frames from Poundland or equivalent and decorate them (yuk! but they will be so proud.)

Mosaic plant pots or pictures with small mosaic glass pieces.

Make things with coloured pipe cleaners you can buy in toy/craft shops or Poundland.

Usborne have brilliant craft books for young children full of cheap ideas.

DollyDabbler

Large cardboard boxes became boats, cars, dens etc indoors and outdoors.

Drawing around them onto a roll of cheap lining paper and then colouring themselves and adding their face etc.

Homemade playdough coloured with food colouring.

Save cardboard tubes and boxes and milk carton tops for an afternoon of junk modelling.

Collect yoghurt pots etc and decorate and fill with rice and dried peas to make musical shakers then sing and shake along to childrens music on you tube.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Fingermouse, scampi, etc. Paper, glue, thread and then make up stories and songs about them, filming them on your phone.

Tell a drawing story. Get lining paper and start making up a tale about a pet's secret life as a superhero. Start on the left and just go on with cartoons of scenes. Something like 'the Continuing Adventures of Blackberry the Special Agent Rabbit'. That one can run for years.