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Easy Holiday Crafts for Kids

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The best way to bond with your kids when there’s a holiday is to get into craft projects together. Take some colourful pieces of paper, glue, glitter, scissors, and a box of craft embellishments, and you’re ready to create your own versions of these easy holiday crafts for kids.

New-Year Noisemakers

Want to make some noise but don’t want your kids to play with firecrackers? These noisemakers are a fun way to ring in the New Year!

Materials:

  • 2 Styrofoam cups
  • Glue
  • Glitter or metallic paper
  • Paint brush
  • Pipe cleaners
  • Scissors
  • Candies (optional)

Steps:

  1. Decorate your Styrofoam cups using some glue and glitter or metallic paper.
  2. Cut your pipe cleaners in halves, and then twirl each half using your finger. Once they’re all twirled, group them in two, and twist each group together on one end.
  3. Using your scissors, punch a hole on the bottom of each cup, and then stick the twisted end of the pipe cleaners into the hole. Bend the end so they don’t fall out.
  4. Put some candies on one cup and then carefully, without getting glue on the candies, use the paint brush to stick the two cups together.
  5. At midnight, break your noisemaker to welcome the New Year!

Easter Bunny Mask and Tail

Make Easter a little more special by creating Easter Bunny costumes for you and your kids. Here’s how.

Materials:

  • Cardboard
  • Cotton balls
  • Pink construction paper
  • Pink pompom
  • Black pipe cleaners
  • String
  • Pencil
  • Glue
  • Scissors
  • Safety pin

Steps:

  1. Using a pencil, trace the shape of a bunny’s head (minus the mouth part) and tail onto the cardboard. Cut them out using the scissors, making sure that you also cut holes for the eyes. Leave a small slit on each side of the mask for the string as well.
  2. On the pink construction paper, trace the shape of the bunny’s ears. Make sure that you make it half-an-inch thinner than the cardboard cut-out.
  3. Glue the pink bunny ears on the cardboard and then cover the mask and tail with cotton balls.
  4. Decorate the mask using the pompom as the bunny’s nose and the pipe cleaners as its whiskers.
  5. Using the string for the mask and the pin for the tail, you can now wear your Easter Bunny costume.

Christmas Wreath

What’s a fun and way to decorate your kids’ bedroom doors? Create this Christmas wreath with them!

Materials:

  • Paper plate
  • Tissue paper
  • String
  • Red pompoms
  • Red ribbon
  • Paint (green, red and gold)
  • Plastic container
  • Glue
  • Scissors

Steps:

  1. In a wide plastic container, mix your green paint with some water. Dip your tissue paper into the mixture for a few seconds and then let each sheet dry.
  2. While waiting for the tissue to dry, trace a lit candle on the centre of the paper plate. Cut around it by using your scissors, making sure to leave the candle and the ribbed edge as your frame.
  3. Paint the candle using your red and gold paint.
  4. Once the sheets are dry, crumple them into balls, and stick them to the frame.
  5. Decorate your wreath with the red pompoms and ribbon. Use the string to hang it on the wall.

So, here are a few Christmas crafts to try with your kids. Which one are you making?

Brendan Wetzel’s Top Tip for Children’s Illustrations

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Children’s book are always filled with art and illustration. According to illustrators like Brendan Wetzel, this is due to the fact that it speaks more to them, particularly since they cannot read yet. Through the art of illustration, characters get personalities and emotions can shine through. They say a picture paints a thousand words, and that is true for children as well.

Brendan Wetzel on Why Children Need Illustrations

Children are notoriously impatient and they often struggle with keeping their attention on a single page for long periods of time. They prefer having a glance and making up their own mind about a story. If an author writes a children’s book, or a magazine targeted at children, therefore, they must enter into a solid partnership with their illustrator if they are to be successful. Hence, they must also know where to find good illustrators and familiarize themselves with their work.

A good artist will be able to immerse a child in their images in a way that captivates them. In the world of children’s literature, this is actually a two way street. For instance, an author could write a book and ask an artist to come up with images, and any images that are not chosen can inspire the author to write another story. Sometimes, illustrators become so skilled at what they do, that they start to write their own stories to accompany the images that they have made. These are the ones who can create true magic, using both images and words to tell stories.

There is a very big difference between the illustrations needed for medical writings, journals, articles, and regular literature. Those that are created for children are truly unique, because they enable to tell a story in a single image for those who cannot read. For adult writings, images are a point of reference, rather than the story in its own right. Good artists also understand the visual processing capabilities of young children, sticking to simple shapes and primary colors for the very young, and going more in depth as the child ages. They also use a range of different mediums, such as paper cut illustrations and acrylics, and different types of inks, such as pastels, water colors, color pencils, dark markers, oil paints, and so on. A good artist is able to adapt their personal style to the theme that they are working on, creating something that is both unique and fit for purpose.

Some children’s illustrators have become global sensations. Interestingly, many of these came from the Netherlands. For instance, the recently deceased Dick Bruna created the Nijntje (commonly known as Miffy) character, made solely from simple shapes and primary colors. Anton Piek, meanwhile, worked on the Brothers Grimm stories and his drawings were eternalized in the creation of an entire theme park with a magical forest in which children can literally immerse themselves in Piek’s drawings. While many of us remember authors, it is perhaps time that we started to remember illustrators as well.

Keeping a Close Eye on your Child’s Vision

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According to recent research, one in twenty pre-school children now wears glasses, and problems with visual acuity is a growing problem among younger people. This is down in part to poor eating habits, lack of exercise and increasing amount of time spent in front of a screen (as well as natural eye diseases and macular degeneration), and it highlights the need for parents to pay attention to their children’s vision.

But how can you do this? And what steps can you take to ensure your child’s eyes stay healthy? The first thing you can do is to ask your child if they have any problems with their vision. Often children don’t know there’s a problem (particularly if they’ve had issues from birth), or they don’t want to say anything for fear of being different from their counterparts. Ask your child regularly if they have any issues, and keep an eye out for tell-tale signs such as problems reading or difficulties at school.

Similarly, you should also ensure you get regular eye tests for your child. This is the best way of ensuring their eyes are healthy, or dealing with any problems with their vision. It may be that your child needs glasses or an operation, but it’s better to fork out for surgery or a pair of must-have Ray-Ban glasses than have them struggle through their school years with vision problems.

When it comes to keeping your children’s eyes healthy, there are several simple steps you can take:

  • Ensure a varied and healthy diet, containing fruits, vegetables and plenty of amino acids
  • Make sure you child gets regular exercise
  • Limit screen time, ideally to less than two hours per day
  • Schedule yearly eye examinations, both to ensure their visual acuity is good, but also as they can be an early indicator of other diseases
  • Ensure appropriate eye protection is worn during sports and other activities
  • Ensuring children’s eyes are protected from the sun, with 100% UV protection sunglasses being worn whenever appropriate

Of course, there are some things you simply can’t prevent – such as disease or certain injuries – but you can take steps to limit the likelihood of these things occurring, and keep your children’s eyes healthy for longer.

Increasing The Level Of Literacy In Your Child

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We all want to give our children the best that we possibly can in life, and one of the best ways of doing this is giving them the very best education that you can, and igniting a passion in your child for learning. When children are young, their brain is like a sponge absorbing masses of information on a daily basis which helps them to develop and learn to express themselves. There are lots of ways that you can ignite this passion in your child, and all you need to spend a little time with them and show them how much fun learning can be!

What You Can Do In Your Home

There are lots of different activities that you can do with your child from a young age that will help to increase their levels of literacy. Even when your baby is only a few weeks old, talking and singing to them helps them to learn to listen and focus, preparing them to get ready to speak. A good trick is to use rhymes a lot, even if they are nonsense, as it is the patterns of speech that you are showing your child which are essential. Singing nursery rhymes is also good and if you want your child to copy you then make it fun. If you start by copying your child, then they will soon begin to copy you and make a game of things. The trick to teaching is just to make it fun, the more fun the child has, the more open they will be to learning. Talk about the things around you, the objects in your house and garden, or what you can see in pictures and storybooks. Spark their imagination and sit back and watch them thrive!

Find Somewhere That Can Assist You With The Process

Another consideration to help your child develop is to introduce them into a structured daycare facility where they will not only increase their literacy levels, but they will also be learning about social interaction, and controlling, as well as expressing their feelings. There are many excellent child care centres in Sydney, many of which offer superb facilities along with a high-level of care for the children. Choose one that teaches in a way that you are happy with, and one also has a full and varied curriculum, which will see your child learning about many new things that they have never seen or heard of before. You will know you are in the right place when you find a teacher in one of the schools that has that learning bug and also can ignite it in children, making learning a thing of fun.

Every child is different and will develop at a different rate, so do not get frustrated if your child does not develop as quick as you wanted. Give them time and find out what they like to learn, and you can find a way to set their passion for learning alight.