3 quick and easy summer craft ideas for toddlers

As spring is set to give way to summer, the children are going to be home a lot more for the mid-year break from school. This means that they need to be entertained. While your older children and teens can essentially go and do their own thing with their friends or in their rooms (probably playing Fortnite), toddlers require a little more attention than the other kids, so we thought we would share some summer craft ideas to help pass the time.

This is a collaborative post.

Their playful nature and natural curiosity mean that toddlers can get into all kinds of trouble if you don’t keep an eye on them, and if they get hungry, bored, or (please, God, no!) both, then you could be in for a world of pain the likes of which you never thought possible.

Fortunately, toddlers are very easily pleased and most of them love nothing more than getting their hands sticky, dirty or covered with paint while they develop their art and craft skills. 

Some quick and easy summer craft ideas that you can do with your toddler in one afternoon include:

• Paper Cup Cacti
• Pasta Jewelry
• Fruit Prints

Paper cups are a crafty person’s favorite since they have so many uses while pasta jewelry is a craft classic and cross-sections of fruit can print some surprisingly creative shapes, just don’t let the kids eat them with paint on!

Summer Craft Ideas – Paper cup cacti

There are many uses for paper cups when it comes to crafting such as adding texture to something, creating circles, and creating cute farmyard cartoon characters. However, given that they can be filled, paper cups are an excellent container of soil, and therefore plants, but not just any plants, cacti.

Yes, the prickly little ones that require no water and absolutely minimal care and attention, which makes them perfect for the kids. For paper cup cacti, simply decorate your paper cup as a cartoon character and make sure it has a cute smile and large eyes. Then, fill with soil and use various tiny cacti such as star cactus for the characters’ hair. Sounds silly, but is surprisingly effective. 

Pasta jewelry

Probably one of the first things you ever made as an arts and crafts project, pasta jewelry is easy, fun, and passes the time since some projects can take a little longer than the average craft creation. That being said, it isn’t going to take you all day and the concentration required might be just enough to put the little ones in a more malleable mood as they tire a little.

Any tubular pasta that can be threaded is excellent for most pasta jewelry projects. Penne, rigatoni, and macaroni are all excellent choices and for the best effect, make sure you dye the pasta first. To do this, add vinegar to a large pan of water and place the pasta inside, then saturate the mixture with the color you want to dye with and leave for around 20 minutes.

Fruit prints

Creating prints from various objects is an extremely artistic and traditional method of decoration. The benefit of making prints is that even if you are the least artsy person in the world, you can create easy projects with minimal effort that can look amazing, especially when combined with other prints. The nature of printing keeps things uniform and is especially useful when creating artwork with multiple instances of the same thing, such as the spots of a leopard.

All you need to do is gather a selection of sliceable fruit such as apples, bananas, and pears, and then slice them how you want for the effect that you want to achieve. One of our summer craft ideas is to press into paint and print onto your chosen material. An obvious decoration choice for this would be when designing a grocery bag or basket, but simple artworks on paper can be just as fun for toddlers.

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