It’s raining out, you can’t bear to watch another episode of Dora or Diego, and you’ve got hours to pass before nap time or the next meal. And your toddler is just getting started! There are plenty of activities you can use to fill the time – building and then breaking stuff, maybe a board game if you’ve got the stomach for a round of Candy Land or Trouble, or puzzles. How about an art project? You know, some toddler construction paper crafts?
It sounds like work, but the awesome thing about art projects is that they don’t just occupy the kids, but can also, sorta be… fun. Who doesn’t love cutting shit up, and at the end of the project, there’s something to stick on the fridge or show to Grandma.
Toddler Construction Paper Crafts are Easy and Fun
But you need a plan and at least some supplies. Some parents who probably aren’t reading this probably have a whole Arts cabinet with pipe cleaners, doilies, googly eyes, and glitter pens. You? Presumably you’re here reading this blog because you’ve got just the basics: construction paper (or just paper), scissors, crayons (you have crayons, right!?), and glue (or tape).
And so here are 5 of our kids’ favorite minimal-supply arts activities: a few toddler construction paper crafts using just paper, scissors and glue!
Thanksgiving Hand Turkey
If you grew up in the States, I guarantee you did this in some 1st grade arts class. Frankly, the image is probably enough to explain what you need to do, but here are some instructions anyway so you don’t end up with a reject version.
- Grab one of those pieces of paper, drop your hand on it with fingers spread, and use a crayon to trace from one side of your wrist, around each finger, and back down the other side of your wrist. You can also have your kid trace your hand – which, guaranteed, they will love – but you will probably need to correct it else you’ll end up with the aforementioned reject turkey. (It’s better to use your hand as it will mean the kid has to spend more time cutting, buying you a few more free minutes to yourself.)
- Hand the turkey over to the kid, and have him/her cut it out! While that’s in motion, proceed to step 3.
- See that orange beak? It’s a small triangle. You need to cut out one of those.
- And that red thing (it’s called a gizzard), you need to cut out one of those. It’s basically a small rounded-rectangle.
- Let the kid glue the beak and gizzard to the back of the thumb, which is what becomes the turkey’s face. You can add the eye, and of course can draw or write whatever you’d like on the body. Many versions of this project suggest adding something you’re thankful for in each finger.
- On one or more other pieces of paper, draw out some turkey feathers – this is basically a rocket ship drawn with your non-dominant hand. A bunch of these can be glued between each of the fingers.
- Practice gobble gobble sounds.
Decoupage
Wha-what? Decoupage is a fancy word for gluing stuff on top of other glued stuff (not quite – but good enough for our purposes).
To deconstruct this thing: at the bottom there is a piece of paper or cardboard. Glued to that are tens or hundreds of cut, colored shapes. On top of that is a plain piece of paper with a funky cutout of what looks like some branches and a leaf.
It sounds like a lot of work, and it is… for the kid! (NB: it will be messy.) You’ll need a lot of construction paper for this one.
- You need something that will serve as the base of the picture. In theory this can be a piece of plain printer paper, but it will be much better to use construction paper, or if you have it a piece of cardboard. You’ve probably got an old Amazon box lying around.
- Get a whole bunch of construction paper, and tell the kid to go nuts cutting out different shapes. If it’s not messy, you’re doing something wrong.
- Give the kid the glue stick, and free reign to glue all them shapes to the base page, covering it up in entirety. Cover the page completely so that no part of the base is visible.
- On a new piece of paper (the same size as the base), have the kid draw a couple of fun shapes – whatever they want. Then, assist the kid in cutting those shapes out.
- Lastly, use the glue stuck along one side of the newly cut-up piece and paste it over the garbled shapes.
A pretty awesome walkthrough is available here.
A Landscape
This picture? No way you’re making this. Use it for inspiration. The basic goal here is to make a landscape.
- Start with a blue piece of paper. This will be the sky (or the water), and you need to fill in the rest.
- On other pages, draw clouds. Some of these clouds will be clouds, and others will be bushes. Note the clouds and bushes in the image are basically the same shapes. The clouds are just bushes cut in half.
- Create layers: glue bushes on top of bushes and clouds on top of clouds.
- You can add in a smiling sun in one corner. Kids like smiling suns.
- Freeform the crap out of the rest of it. Add some trees or flowers. Draw a flock of birds – these are basically just Ms. Or add a house (square foundation and triangle roof) with a chimney.
Paper Airplanes!
A personal favorite: build a whole bunch of paper airplanes, and then throw ’em. Now, there are a variety of styles of paper airplanes, varying from simple to impossibly complex. And, if you have a toddler, it’s probably very unlikely the kid can follow these instructions. But, they’ll have fun watching you have fun making paper airplanes, and then they’ll love throwing and chasing them. (Technically, this shouldn’t qualify under toddler construction paper crafts, as most likely you the adult will be building these, letter the toddler fly and chase them.)
Here are instructions for a couple of airplanes:
Or, just check out Fold`N Fly for more inspiration.
Finger Puppets
A finger puppet is basically a piece of paper strapped to your finger. The secret is that regardless of what the puppet is, whether it’s a monkey, a witch, or an octopus, at the base of the puppet you need a length of paper that’s curved into a ring. It’s less complex than it sounds. (If you’re into finger puppets, check out our WowWee Fingerlings product review.)
First, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that you can print out free finger puppet templates. For example, here’s a Monkey with a link to its own instructions. If you want to get real fancy, you can even go and buy a premo template from Etsy. Of course, you can also roll up your own.
Consider this KizClub pig. There’s a rectangle at the base which serves as the ring, and then a decapitated pig head, which serves as the puppet. You can do this yourself – draw a rectangle, and then draw whatever you want above that. Then cut it out, roll the rectangle into a ring, and tape or glue it closed. Voila! If you have some paper lunch bags, you can graduate to the big boys (check out the full tutorial over at Artsy Momma who has a ton of stellar toddler construction paper crafts and more).
If your kids are like ours, they’re happy just cutting paper, so it shouldn’t take much imagining to come up with your own ideas. Or, if you want to move away from construction paper, some other activities available here.
