Summer Crafts: 4 Entertaining Options
The arrival of summer means its vacation time for your kids. It’s also a good time to emphasize that there are pastimes beyond video games. You can use these fun summer crafts as highly entertaining and much more productive alternatives.
Furthermore, the season is perfect for keeping your kids busy and peaceful with simple and fun projects involving nature and the outdoors. Read this article to learn more about summer crafts for kids.
Four great summer crafts options
These are some of the fun summer crafts that provide a wonderful opportunity to spend quality time with your family:
1. Summer crafts: decorative shells
This first option is sure to keep the little ones entertained. It’s inspired by the mosaic technique, using modelling clay that hardens in the air. You’ll need clay, seashells of different shapes and sizes, a wooden stick, tape, varnish, and a brush.
Begin by molding the clay into the shape you want for the base. Try to cover the edges with shells without deforming the base. Once everything is in place, adjust everything into place as best you can, then make a hole in it with the wooden stick.
Next, let it dry and then apply a layer of varnish. Finally, put a rope through the hole so you can hang it, lending a touch of summer charm to your home’s decor.
2. Water bottle boats
To make a toy boat for the kids, you’ll need a shoebox lid, two water bottles, a skewer, cloth, electrical tape, and a small piece of cork. The first step is to make the cardboard waterproof. You can do this by completely covering it with electrical tape.
Then, add the empty bottles, also using the tape. Next, fold the fabric to make a triangle. Glue the fabric in place and cut out around the shape. You can even add a small flag if you like.
To make the sail, take a square of fabric, a wooden skewer, and glue. Wrap one side of the fabric around the tip of the skewer and glue it in place. Finally, make a small hole in the boat. Slide in the mast and sail, and plant the tip of the skewer in a small piece of cork.
“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
– Edward de Bono
3. Birdhouses
An empty juice or milk carton is the perfect starting point for this fun project. In addition, reusing materials is a good way to teach children the importance of caring for the environment.
Simply take the box and create an opening in the lower half as a door, so that the birds can enter their cozy new home.
Children can have fun collecting branches, small leaves, moss and dried flowers to stick on the outside of the box. This will make it even more homey for the birds.
Finally, poke a small hole in the top and connect a sturdy cable or strong fishing line to hang the birdhouse from a branch. It’s best to place it somewhere where the children can see it from inside the house.
4. Checkerboards
Collect 24 small, rounded stones of roughly the same size. Next, ask your kids to pick their two favorite colors, painting half the rocks one color and half the other. You can add a creative twist by, for example, having one half be stripes and the other be polka dots.
Next, help them draw a 16×16 grid of squares on a small square piece of wood or recycled cardboard, so they can paint it in a checkerboard pattern.
Children will really enjoy making their own board game. In addition, using natural resources makes the project even more memorable and fun.
Finally, keep in mind that this selection of summer crafts will give you plenty to do with the little ones over their vacation. Just make sure they have everything they need to develop their creative abilities.