October - Halloween Bats

Halloween is nearly here and we needed something simple and fun for our crafty toddlers to after some thinking and research we decided to make these lovely Halloween Bats. The prep time is minimal but the black paint can get messy so be prepared for some messy crafty fun!!!

A finished Halloween Bat

To make these cute Halloween Bats you will need the following:
/ Toilet roll tube (approx. 1.5 rolls per bat)
/ Black paint
/ Boggolie eyes
/ White paper (cut in to teeth shape)
/ PVA glue
/ Glitter and pompoms (optional)

Prep kit for the Halloween Bats

To make your Halloween Bats with your crafty toddlers follow these steps:
1/ Cut out your bat wings by folding a toilet roll in half, and cutting out one wing, leaving the wide edge of the fold untouched.

TOP TIP: If you have a kitchen roll then you can cut multiple wings from one roll

2/ Paint both an untouched toilet roll and a set of wings in black paint and leave to dry
3/ Stick on boggolie eyes and teeth
4/ Stick wings on the back on the toilet roll
5/ Apply some glue and sprinkle glitter and add pompoms if required!

TOP TIP: If your crafty toddler is enjoying themselves why not create a cloud of bats, some short, some tall, some with noses etc.

Halloween Bats

Halloween Bats

July - Apple Tree Orchard

The apple trees are normally beginning to sprout apples at this time of year, so how better to teach little ones about this process than making their very own apple tree and if you have enough apple trees you can make an orchard! This crafty toddler activity does take more prep time than usual - say 20 mins but the result is great.

The beginnings of our apple tree orchard

Here are the things that you will need to make your apple trees:
/ A4 paper, cut out to look like a round, puffy cloud
/ Green paint
/ Green, pink and red tissue paper torn in to squares
/ Glitter
/ PVA glue
/ Card board strips (about 10-15cm long by 5cm wide)
/ Scissors

Apple tree prep kit

Follow these steps to make your crafty toddler apple trees:
1/ Mix some PVA glue in with the green paint then paint the paper
2/ Whilst the paint is still wet, adorn with glitter and pieces of craft paper. roll up the pink/red pieces of craft paper
3/ Leave to dry

Top Tip: Some of our trees got a bit scrunched up as they were drying but this turned out to be to their benefit as they look more authentic when you put them on their trunks

4/ Fold the strip of card in half then, on the bend, use a scissors to make a cut about 2cm long
5/ Once the tree top is dry slot it in to the cut on the tree trunk and gently stand it up.

Our apple trees in progress

A scrunched up apple tree

The apple tree orchard

July - The Watering Hole

Hopefully the summer will be upon us soon and we'll all be dreaming of our own personal oasis, right? I thought that creating this colour and stick watering hole was a fun and very simple piece of craft for toddlers.

The watering hole

Here are the things that you will need to create your watering hole:

/ A4 paper

/ Crayons

/ Safari animals and butterfly / dragonfly stickers

/ Black felt top pen

Follow these simple steps to make your watering hole:

1/ Draw an arid scene / background on the A4 paper, we took inspiration from the South Africa, make sure there is a water feature!

2/ Your crafty toddler can then colour in the scene as they wish

3/ Help your crafty toddler to stick on the animals and insects!

June - Newspaper Hats

Making these newspaper hats is great fun as they are super cheap to make and can be decorated in many different ways...

Here are the things that you need to create your newspaper hats:
/ News paper sheets
/ Paints and sponges
/ Glitter
/ Felt tip pen
/ Sequins
/ Craft paper

Follow these steps to make your newspaper hats: 
1/ Position your newspaper in landscape in front of you, fold to mark the centre, fold in the top corners to meet the centre fold, fold the bottom up where the two corners meet, secure with cellotape

2/ Draw on any characters, our Piratr scull and cross bones was a hit

3/ Sponge on the paint (brushes tend to leave too much paint on the paper, making it sag)

4/ Decorate with glitter and feathers etc

Top Tip: roll up some of the craft paper, chop one side with a scissors and you have a feather!

These hats can be made to fit adults too so get involved and have fun!

June - Recycled Father's Day Card

This is a really simple, easy and non-messy Father's Day card. The basic idea is to reuse pictures and messages from previous greetings cards to create your very own, unique Fathers Day card. Simple, cheap and non-messy!

Below is a list of the things that you need to make your recycled Father's Day card:
/ Cut out images and message from greetings cards
/ PVA glue
/ Crayons
/ Assortments of stickers
/ Glitter
/ Coloured crate paper
/ Blank cards and envelopes

The things required to make your recycled Fathers Day card

Follow these steps to make your recycled Father's Day card:
1/ Start your card by writing your message in the card - this way you wont be waiting for the card to dry before it can be finished
2/ Adorn your card with as many of the recycled messages and images as your craft toddler wishes, don't forget to decorate the back and inside too.
3/ Finish off with a sprinkle of glitter!

A selection of the recycled Father's Day cards made at our toddler group

A selection of the recycled Father's Day cards made at our toddler group

A selection of the recycled Father's Day cards made at our toddler group

Inside one of our recycled Father's Day card

The back of one of our recycled Father's Day cards

May - Mr Rollie Heads

This is a very fun piece of craft to do with your toddlers and creating Mr Rollie Head in all different colours and expressions went down a treat too. The prep time is minimal but does require you to have stored up some toilet roll iners.

Mr Rollie Head - Bring him to life using your fingers as arms

The things you will need to create your Mr Rollie Heads are:
Toilet roll inners
Paints
Glitter
PVA glue
Pom poms
Sheets of coloured tissue
Boggling eyes OR white circle stickers
Felt tip pen

Here are the things that you need to create your Mr Rollie Head

Follow these steps to make your Mr Rollie Head:
1/ Add some PVA glue to your paints so that the glitter will stick to the paint without needing another layer of glue
2/ Paint the toilet roll inner
3/ Add glitter and sequins then leave to dry
4/ Once dry, stick on the boggling eyes or white stickers and draw on pupils with the felt tip pen

Top tip - draw on eyelashes or eyebrows or draw different shaped pupils to create a character

5/ Stick on a pom pom for the nose
6/ Draw on a smilie mouth

Top tip - draw on teeth or a tongue to create a character

7/ Take a sheet of coloured tissue and glue in in to the top of the toilet roll to give Mr Rollie Head some hair!

Mr Rollie Head - The finished product

Our family of Mr Rollie Heads

May - Summer Skies

This crafty idea of creating a summer sky is really simple, it has loads of bright colours and sensory pieces too. It requires very little preparation time all you really need are some bits and bobs that you find around the garden.

Summer Skies

Here are the materials that you could use to make your craft summer skies:
A4 paper
Yellow paint
Cotton wool
Coloured tissue paper
PVA glue
Assortment of things from the garden (grass, leaves, petals)

Follow these simple steps to create your craft summer skies:
1/ Use the yellow paint to make a circle (sun) of hand prints on the A4 paper
2/ Stick randon puffs of cotton wool on to the paper (clouds)
3/ Go mad sticking all the bits and bobs on that you found around the garden
4/ Leave to dry and your  summer skies are done!

Here are a range of our summer skies created at toddler group

Here is my favorite summer sky

May - Ice Cream Tower

Thought that these ice cream towers might help make the summer feel more real - these are fun to do and can be enjoyed by older children too. Prep takes a little bit of time (15 mins) but the actual decoration time can be as long as your little ones are interested.. there are loads of way to decorate the scoops.

Ice cream tower

Things you will need to make your crafty ice cream tower:
Coloured card (cut in to rough circles or oval shapes)
PVA glue
Felt tip pens
Coloured paints
Glitter (optional)
Sequins (optional)
Art tissue paper (or other light materials to decorate with)
Paper plate
Coffee stirrer

Craft preparation for ice cream towers

Follow these steps to make your craft ice cream tower:
1/ Fold the paper plate in half and draw the outline of a traditional ice cream bowl on it using the felt tip
2/ Take any number of the coloured card circles / ovals and decorate with paint / pens / glitter / tissue paper / sequins

Top tip - why not make some look like waffles or draw on some swirls or cut some of the card away to make it look as if it were melting or draw on some fruit.

3 / Once dry, stick the ice cream scoops to the paper plate to create an ice cream tower
4 / Stick the coffee stirrer diagonal across the back of the ice cream scoops to add stability but also look like the neck of a spoon when viewed from the front and voila you tasty looking ice cream tower is ready to admire.

Top tip - if your ice cream tower begins to lean forward, add another coffee stirrer along the back length.

April (week 12) - Spring animal prints

Spring animal prints are fun and easy to do, prep time is about 10 mins and you can create multiple backgrounds for different spring scenes.

Spring animal prints

Things that you will need to create your spring animal prints are:
/ Farmyard animal sponges
/ A4 paper
/ Felt tip pen
/ Paints and brushes
/ Glitter

Spring animal prints - preparation kit

To create your spring animal prints with your crafty toddlers, follow these steps:
/ Draw the background on to the paper - the spring scenes that we used were duck ponds, cow shed, rabbit hutch and fenced field.
/ Help your crafty toddler to paint the sponges then squish the sponge on the paper.

Top tip: don't be shy with the paint on the sponge as more paint makes for better prints

/ Use paint brushes to add some splashes of colour to the background scene
/ Add glitter for the finishing touch!

Top Tip: using different coloured paint on a sponge can produce some really colorful prints

Spring animal printing in progress

Spring animal print

Spring animal print

Spring animal print

Our spring animal print family

March (week 10) - Easter Egg Dish

Easter Egg Dishes are easy to make and can be used for decorating the house around the Easter period - we used our for holding our Easter egg stash! Preparation time is zero apart from getting all the materials ready.

The finished article - Easter egg dish

Things you'll need to make your Easter egg dish:
/ Paper plate
/ Paints and brushes
/ PVA glue
/ Glitter
/ Easter confetti shapes
/ Felt tip pen

Our demo Easter egg dish

Here is how to make your Easter egg dish:
/ Draw a large egg shape in the middle of the paper plate with the felt tip pen and write your message(s) around the sides of the plate.
/ Draw wavy lines, circles, stripes, triangles within the egg shape.
/ Get painting! I added some PVA glue to the paint so that the glitter and confetti shapes stuck to the paint rather than needing to glue over the paint later.
/ Add your glitter and confetti shapes and leave to dry!

All of our Easter egg dishes

Confetti-tastic Easter egg dish!

Glitter-tastic Easter egg dish!

Arty Easter egg dish

Spring colours Easter egg dish

Top tip:  I bought our Easter confetti shapes from Craft Crocodiles online shop.