Quick and Easy Crafts for Kids
Happy Valentine’s day everyone – it’s me, Darla bringing you some fun today. I am an avid crafter and love finding new ideas on the internet for my girls or most often for my girl scout troop. Pinterest has made this easy for me because I can pin some of my favorite ideas I have found for me to go back and refer to when I need an idea here or there. Sometimes I will find a few new unexpected pins (or “hints” as I call them) that my daughters have added to my board in hopes that I will do them soon – such as the glow in the dark slime that we recently did below:
This is a really quick and easy craft to do with kids that uses just a few items you can find at your local craft store or Target. Below is what you need to create your slime:
– borax (from laundry aisle of a grocery store)
– Elmer’s™ non-toxic blue glue gel (sold with office or school supplies)
– Glow-Away™ washable paint (sold near tempera paint at Michael’s craft store)
– water
– bowls or cups
– spoons
Instructions for Making Glowing Slime
1. In one bowl, mix 1/3 cup glue with 1 cup water. I used a whisk, since stirring with a spoon was slow.
2. Stir or whisk in about half a tube of the paint.
3. Pour about half a cup of hot water into a cup or second bowl.
4. Stir in borax until it stops dissolving (starts to leave some at the bottom). This makes a saturated solution without any measuring at all.
5. Measure and mix 1/3 cup of the borax solution (the clear part, not the undissolved stuff at the bottom) with 1 cup of the glue/glow mixture. You can try to whisk this, but it’s easier to use your hands.
You can store your slime in a regular baggie for what seems to be indefinitely. To make it glow, just put it under a bright light and then let the kids take it to a dark area in your home and when you hear the screams of excitement – you will know that it is glowing!
As part of a girl scout badge to learn about flowers, I decided to have the girls make a something using potpourri. My first idea was to have them take a foam circle ball and cover it with the potpourri but sadly I did not have much luck keeping the pieces on! Since Valentine’s was coming up, I decided to change things up a bit and proceeded to cut out hearts out of heavy cardstock instead. Here is a sample of what the little sweet smelling heart looked like.
To make these hearts, you will need the following:
– bag of potpourri, preferably a kind that has different pieces of flowers
– white cardstock
– heart shape template
– ribbon to hang the heart somewhere
– hole puncher for ribbon
– tacky white glue
– foam brushes
– bowls for the glue and potpourri
– paper towels to keep the mess to a minimum
There is really no instructions here because you want to encourage your kids to make any kind of design they want. I had 11 girls with me and each girl took their time designing their very own heart. The whole room smelled so wonderful and heavenly after we were done!
Besides Pinterest, the Disney Family Fun site has many ideas that you can do with your kids. A couple more of my favorite sites are: Enchanted Learning, Crafts.Kaboose and Martha Stewart’s site. I would add a word of caution – often you can have the best intentions about a particular craft but it is always inevitable that things may go awry and when they do – just laugh and let your kids come up with a creative alternative to the one you had planned to do originally! With that, I will let you get back to your Valentine’s plans and hope that today you let someone know how much you love them! Happy Scrapping!
