Jackie Currie

In this post, we’ll show you how kids can practice basic sewing stitches with styrofoam produce trays, plastic sewing needles and yarn. Because some of the kids are quite young, I teach them how to sew using these plastic sewing needles, (affiliate link) but they’re too big to slip through most fabrics, so we’ve been using cardboard lacing cards and such to practice with. For example: The styrofoam trays are great for an early sewing activity because kids can mark designs on the styrofoam and then easily push through the styrofoam with their plastic needles to create a colorful art. Note: For young children, you may want to knot the yarn so it doesn’t slip out of the eye of the needle while they’re sewing.

The paints came in a black plastic palette which is now pretty much empty, and I was thinking that if I cleaned the palette right out and washed it up, it would make for some fun pretend-painting. Note: You could use markers to colour the “paints” on your palette, but I wanted our pretend paint to look like oil paint, so I used some old, goopy paints that were pretty much ready for the trash. It’s been over 5 years since I made our pretend play paint palettes and the hooligans still play with them often! More Pretend Play Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers: 25+preschool activities by 25 bloggers, 10 printables, 50 links to activities not featured in the book all for $8.99!

My daycare kids LOVE using Sharpies, so we’ve come up with a lot of Sharpie crafts and creative ways to use Sharpie markers over the years. For more detailed work and drawing very fine lines, we use ultra-fine Sharpies For large projects, i.e. decorating cardboard forts, we like these chunky chisel tip black Sharpies. The process is fun and fascinating, and it’s a creative way to make coasters, napkins, ornaments, wall art and tie-dyed art. Click the links below to see the full tutorials for the crafts: Sharpie Framed Art for Toddlers – one of the great things about creating art on a piece of photo paper is that it fits perfectly into an inexpensive photo frame.

This paper plate robin craft is fun and easy for toddlers and preschoolers to make with paper plates, tissue paper and paint. Making these robins is a great activity to accompany a preschool study on robins, and it’s just one of our many easy preschool bird crafts. As you know, we have a Mother Robin that comes to nest on our deck every year, so it’s a perfect opportunity for my toddlers and preschoolers to observe, up-close, the behaviours of robins, and how they look after their babies when they hatch. And that’s all there is to making our adorable paper plate robin craft.