Sensory Cards for Babies

Babies love to touch and feel (often with their mouths).  One way to help give them more objects to play with but keep them safe is to glue the objects onto card board squares or even paint chip color cards from the local paint shop.  There are so many options:

- strips of lace
- a dried out sponge
- bubble packaging
- felt
- feathers
- sticky tape
- cotton balls
- velcro - both sides
- sandpaper
- crumpled alumnim foil

Toilet Paper Roll Nature Bracelets

Toilet paper rolls always make a great upcycled craft.  For littler kids with tiny wrists cut the tube in half and have them find flowers and leaves and other objects from nature and glue on to the tube.  You can also use double sided sticky tape and have the kids stick the objects on as they go.

Twitches uses stickers and colors them with markers.

Get the instructions here:
http://twitchetts.com/2015/04/toddler-craft-toilet-paper-ro.html/

Duckling Finger Puppets

These finger puppets are as easy as it gets.  Take a bright yellow rubber dish washing glove, cut off the fingers and color on beaks and eyes.  You'll have five little duck finger puppets. 

An Invitation to Draw

Surprise the kids and set up a drawing station.  You can include lots of different paper, markers, stampers and such.  The hope is that the invitation provides lots of open-ended play and imagination so the more colorful and objects you can add the better. 

Water Balloon Baseball

I candy handmade has the most fantastic baseball/water birthday party.  One activity that would be great for the summer is water balloon batting practice.  A great way for kids to work on their swing and cool off.

Good for ages 5 and up.

Get the instructions here:
http://icandyhandmade.blogspot.com/2012/08/icandy-baseball-birthday-party.html#undefined

Flower Petal Cards

Scrumdilly do has a neat way to take flower petals and turn them into butterfly cards.  Looks like the trick to keeping the petals fresh looking is to flatten them dry under a book.

Good for ages 4 and up.

Get the instructions here:
http://scrumdillydo.blogspot.ca/2012/04/flower-petal-butterflies-part-one.html

Melted Crayon Painting

Buzz feed lists a lot of ways to use crayons and a hair dryer for a really neat effect but the one that's most different is using up all of those little crayon pieces to create something new.  Kids will have as much fun smashing up the crayons and designing them on the page as they will melting them. 

Good for ages 5 and up.

Get the instructions here:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/creative-ways-to-create-melted-crayon-art

Growing a jeweled rose uses crayon shavings as well, but instead of a hair dryer, she leaves her canvas out in the sun and answers the question what happens when crayons are left out in the sun?

Get the instructions here:
http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2013/08/paint-and-play-crayon-art.html