Learn all about crafting with kids, including tips and tricks for fun and successful projects with your little ones!
If you’ve ever tried crafting with kids, you know it can go one of two ways. Either it’s great and everyone has fun. Or it’s a disaster. There’s not often an in between. And that can be really frustrating for adults and kids alike.
Why does crafting with kids go wrong? How can you make crafting with kids easier and more fun? These are some fantastic questions. I happen to be both a professional craft enthusiast and a person with kids. So today we’re going to talk about crafting with kids and I’m going to give you a bunch of tips & tricks for fun and successful projects.
If you have more ideas, I’d love to hear them in the comments!
Why should you craft with your kids?
- Craft and art projects are great for kids for a variety of practical reasons including hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, counting, pattern recognition, self-expression, imagination, confidence, following directions, and simply having fun.
- You get to spend more time together.
- It’s fun! Well…it CAN be fun…
How to choose a craft project to do with kids
When you are choosing a craft project to do with kids, remember that you know your kids best. You know what they like and what will frustrate them. I know, for example, that one of my children gets frustrated with any kind of sewing. It’s just not their thing. Keep that kind of thing in mind.
You also know if your child likes to think outside the box and be super creative or if you have a perfectionist who wants their project to turn out exactly like the instructions (or something in between). That can help you decide if you want to do a project with very specific steps and final product (we’re going to make a paper plate umbrella with cotton ball clouds) or something looser (we’re going to experiment with making animals out of air dry clay).
Crafting with kids: preparation is key
- Free crafting is super fun but if you want to do a specific project, plan it out.
- Prepare for a mess. Even the “cleanest” craft project in the world has the potential to be messy with kids. It’s their special talent. Cover your surfaces, wear a smock, put the dog and the baby in another room, etc.
- Prepare the supplies and tools ahead of time. Get out the things you need. Mix anything that needs mixing. Or do any other steps that kids can’t do ahead of time. If there are any parts of the craft that are particularly difficult or unsafe for kids and you can do them ahead of time, do them ahead of time. This would include things like using an iron or a sharp knife etc.
- Prepare the kids. Consider making an example project for them to look at. Whether this is helpful may depend on your child. Some kids like to be more perfectionist and may focus on what their finished product “should” look like. Others will look at your sample and do something completely different. You know which one your child is. Another option is to watch a video of either that specific craft or the type of craft being done. This can both help them see what to do and get them excited about.
- If the craft project needs to dry, think about where you can put it to dry BEFORE YOU START! There’s nothing worse than holding a drippy wet kid painting, frantically looking around for a section of empty countertop to put it on.
Crafting with Kids: Tips & Tricks for Fun & Successful Projects
- My number one crafting with kids tip is: adjust your expectations. That’s right. Mindset is key. As with many situations with kids, the more expectations you have about how something will go, the more potential there is to feel disappointed. Set reasonable expectations for the type of project, the length of time you will spend working on it, and how much fun it “should” be. It will not go perfectly. Their final craft will also not be perfect. And that’s ok.
- It’s ok to break the craft project up into parts. You don’t have to do the entire project at one time.
- Go with the flow. Crafting with kids is supposed to be fun. If your child isn’t into the project you’ve planned, it’s ok to just let it go and maybe even try something else. It’s also ok, with art and craft projects, if you kids deviate from the plan and make it look totally different. That’s just them being creative and expressing themselves.
- Quit if it’s not fun. Seriously. It’s ok to quit a craft project. (It’s also ok to quit a book if you’re not enjoying it. That’s not related to this post, but a good life lesson nonetheless!)
- Craft with them. This is supposed to be fun, go ahead and make your own craft along with them, value the process, laugh about the messes, brainstorm together. You don’t even necessarily have to make the same thing. You could sit down with an adult coloring book while they create. But sitting at the same table being creative together is the best. Don’t just set up the craft and disappear.
- Consider the cleanup. Get out the baby wipes and paper towels. Prepare a trash bag. There may be things an adult should clean up. Or maybe you can all work together. You may even decide that the whole thing would be more enjoyable if you just do the cleaning yourself when everyone is finished. That’s entirely up to you and there’s no right answer, but it helps to think about it ahead of time.
- Think about how you react to the finished craft project before you open your mouth. Again, the goal is fun. Find something nice to say. Seriously. Let’s be real, sometimes kids’ crafts are weird. Or ugly. The process of crafting is really what’s important to their little brains and if they don’t get good feedback when they’re finished, they might not want to do it again. “That’s so creative!” is a perfect line that works for pretty much anything.
- Display your finished craft projects. Maybe you hang up a piece of string and hang projects with clothespins, maybe it goes on the fridge. Maybe you take a photo and send it to relatives to show off your work. While the final product isn’t everything in crafting, it sure is rewarding for kids to have something completed to show off and it will remind them of the time you spent doing it together.
Does that make sense? If you only follow one of these tips, adjust your expectations is the most important one. And sometimes it’s the hardest!
But, you might be thinking, ok, so I get it, you want me to prepare things. But I have some more questions…
Are these tips & tricks REALLY going to help make crafting with kids more fun?
Let me give you an example of some of these steps in action. (And of course, I’ll preface this again by saying, this is just what has worked for us, I’m not an expert, nor am I perfect inany sense of the word. And also, you know your kids best.)
The first time we tried tie dying, both of my kids got frustrated by how long it took. My youngest couldn’t do the rubber band wrapping step really at all so she was bored. My oldest needed some help and suggestions for that step but the younger one needed so much more help that I couldn’t help him. I also hadn’t done tie dye in a while so I was trying to look up YouTube tutorials at the same time. Then, by the time we finally got to the dying step they had to wait for me to fill the buckets and mix the dye. They wanted to wander off, I wanted to finish. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great fun either and I ended up doing most of it.
The next time we tried tie dye I did things differently. First, we all watched some short tie dye tutorials. This helped us all know what we were doing and it got us excited (it worked for me too!). I wrapped most of my younger child’s t-shirt with rubber bands ahead of time and then left a few easy spots for them to do on their own. My older child now had seen a video of what to do and needed a lot less help with their rubber bands.
Because this step still took a while, after we did the rubber band wrapping, we stopped for the day. Once the kids went back to doing something else, I wrapped my own shirt in rubber bands.
The next day, I got out the rest of the supplies, set out a tarp on the lawn, filled the rinse bucket and mixed the dye. I got out smocks and gloves for us to wear. I also set aside a separate bin for the tie dye to soak in when we were finished (my kit said it should sit in plastic zipper bags for 24 hours).
THEN I called the kids over. We did our tie dye, my youngest used easy squeeze bottles of dye while my oldest and I dunked in buckets because those were better age appropriate strategies. We had fun. We finished. The kids cleaned up part of the mess (the parts that didn’t involve excess dye). And I cleaned up the rest.
When our shirts were washed and finished we took a group selfie wearing them and put it in our photo album!
Why was crafting with kids more fun with these tips?
This went about a thousand times better because I prepared myself , the supplies, and the kids and we took breaks and I figured out what each kid would need ahead of time and I did the hard parts or helped with the hard parts. We also had a plan for drying and a plan for display before we started.
If you liked this, you may also like some of my other posts…
- Scalloped Garland Knitting Pattern - February 11, 2025
- 30+ Best Valentine’s Day Knitting Patterns - February 6, 2025
- Valentine Heart Wreath Knitting Pattern - February 5, 2025
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