Great paper crafts for kids

Welcome to the school holidays! Whether you dread the thought of filling those long school-less days or you love the chance to hang with your crew, we’ve got some great holiday ideas for you. We’d also love to hear what you are up to with your kids these holidays so feel free to add your own ideas!

Here are two quick paper craft ideas that don’t require oodles of expensive craft supplies.

Snowflakes

My 4 year old is currently obsessed with making snowflakes. She saw it on a tv programme (Shhh! Don’t tell anyone that my kids watch tv!!) and was inspired. When I googled snowflakes, I found an amazing array of designs. Rest assured – the ones we make here are very basic (but lots of fun). And as we’re coming up to winter, they seemed like an appropriate craft idea.

What you need:

Squares of paper. We’ve done it with newspaper, origami paper, printer paper… whatever we have lying around. You just need to make sure that it’s roughly square shaped when you start

Scissors

Something to decorate them with. My kids have used crayons, felts, glitter, pens, pencils… whatever we have lying around!

What you need to do:

1. Start with a square piece of paper 

2. Fold your square of paper into a triangle

3. Then fold the triangle into another triangle.

4. Cut along the sides of the triangle in any kind of pattern you like! Just hack away and you’ll be amazed at the patterns you can make!

5. Unfold your paper to see your gorgeous design!

Of course, if you have an older child or fancy making something more elaborate, you can always have a look at some of these sites:

http://highhopes.com/snowflakes.html

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-6-Pointed-Paper-Snowflakes/

Once you have created your snowflake, you can decorate it. Go crazy with colour and make your snowflake look as fabulous as you can 🙂

We’ve also used our snowflakes to send messages to family living away from us. The kids design a snowflake for each family member and then, as we’re talking about that person, I write down some of the things that the kids say about the person. You might like to encourage them by asking what they like about the person or just enjoy the funny things that kids can come up with!

Paper chain dolls

I’m sure that you all made paper dolls when you were children and I think there’re a really nice way to talk about family – of all kinds!

What you need:

Paper

Scissors

Stuff to decorate the dolls – pens, crayons, felts, fabric, coloured paper etc…

What you need to do:

1. Fanfold a piece of drawing paper evenly

2. Draw your design for the paper dolls. Make sure the design touches both sides of the paper so the dolls “hold hands.” Draw only one half of the doll since the other half will be across the top fold

3. Cut out the doll pattern

If you get a bit confused about where to join and cut, have a look at this video.

Once you have your dolls, you can decorate them. You might like to decorate one for each person in your family or decorate the dolls as friends. You could even use fabric to make clothes for the dolls. Sometimes we leave the dolls chained and sometimes, as a variation on this, we cut them into individual dolls so that we can play with them a bit… maybe you could even make some ‘props’ for your paper dolls. We’ve made chairs, cars, beds… all kinds of things!

So there you go: two quick and easy craft ideas that can be hours of fun! I’d love to hear if you’ve tried these crafts… did they work in your family? What modifications did you make to your crafts? And what crafts do your kids love?

Happy Monday all! Let the holidays begin!

Rochelle

PS If you are looking for more craft ideas, check out our Make it at Home blog or our crafts section