Let them decide.

My mother has sewn, crocheted, knitted, and done practically everything else her entire life. When I was young, she tried to get me interested in crafting, but it just wasn’t my thing. I remember when she tried to teach me to crochet, it wasn’t a pretty sight! It just wasn’t my time. Now, I love to craft, though I still can’t crochet! My daughter, on the other hand, loves to make things. Her very favorite thing to do is to draw and she is very talented if I do say so myself. I guess what I’m trying to say is introduce new things to your children. Show them that there are many creative outlets and help them find the one they enjoy the most. They may be like me, Lord help them, and not discover the joys of crafting till later in life, or they may be like my daughter and want to learn how to do something new all the time.

Why don’t you start off with this easy project. (This project is recommended for children ages 4 and up. Parental supervision is required because of the use of an iron.)

Here’s what you need:

Wax Paper
Crayons
a pencil sharpener
scissors
ribbon
a hold punch
an iron
2 brown paper bags

Tear off a piece of wax paper about a foot long and place it on top of a brown paper bag. Let you child peel the papers off of the crayons and then “sharpen” them with the pencil sharpener over the wax paper. These are the shavings that will create their sun-catcher. Make sure the shavings don’t pile up too high because it makes it difficult to iron. When your child has a look he likes, place another piece of wax paper over the shavings. Now you should lightly press over the bag with your warm iron. Peek to see how well the shavings are melting to determine if you need to turn the heat up on your iron.

Once the paper has cooled to the touch, with safety scissors, let your child cut out shapes like hearts, stars, crosses, you get the idea. You may want to trace the shapes and allow your youngster to cut along the lines. The final step is to punch a hole at the top, thread the ribbon through, and hang your child’s work of art in a sunny window. His face will light up when he sees how proud you are of him. Don’t forget to make one for Grandma!

One of the subjects that’s often covered in preschool is learning about the five senses. Understanding our senses helps us describe the world around us and our experience in it, and it’s fun to explore the senses in different ways.

Rock Your Homeschool has a great free printables pack having to do with the five senses. I love the foldable activity shown above because it emphasizes that the way we really experience our senses is through our brains. They also have a sensory scavenger hunt printable, which doesn’t include taste but has the rest of the senses included.

Of course we don’t really want kids tasting things they find outside (unless you happen to have fruit or vegetables growing nearby) but I like the way Hands on Teaching Ideas handled it by including “something an animal would eat” on their five senses scavenger hunt.

Sea of Knowledge has lots of ideas for things to do with preschoolers to learn about the five senses, as well as this free with email signup template for making a five senses craft (you could also trace the child’s hands instead of using the hands in the template if you like).

Use a potato head toy you probably already have to play a five senses game with the download from A Little Pinch of Perfect. You could do the same thing on paper with a potato (or human body) shape and color on the different sense organs.

Simple Everyday Mom has a cute set of senses puppets you can print and play with, or use for different projects and crafts.

Preschool Packets has a whole set of posts dealing with teaching the five senses (the one linked here is for hearing but the rest are linked within that post), which includes a great idea for making shakers with kids to explore the sense of hearing.

Tim’s Printables has some cute five senses printables where kids can match the image to the sense you’d use to explore it. There’s also a body to label but I think there’s only a male version.

Have you read?