Ask A Baltimore Expert: Easy Crafts To Do With Your Kids

The Daily Meal Staff|Sept. 26, 2014 7:00 am EST

Having kids in the house all day can be a quandary. You don't want the television to babysit them, but sometimes it is difficult to think of anything entertaining, creative and free to do alongside your children. Fortunately, we have consulted an expert for your benefit. Here are five creative crafts custom fit for children.

Danalee Potter
Assistant Principle at Catonsville Elementary
615 Frederick Road
Catonsville, MD 21228
(410) 887-0800
www.catonsvillees.bcps.org

Danalee Potter is a veteran teacher with eight years of teaching elementary age students under her belt, and a total of 10 years in the school systems. She has taught at every elementary grade level 1st through 4th, and is an expert in the learning and growth processes of young children. Danalee's suggestions for creative crafts are not just fun, they are educational.

Home-Made Playdough

"Home-made playdough is a great resource for parents to use. Children can be involved in measuring and mixing the ingredients. Also, not only does the manipulating of dough by young children help to build fine-motor skills and muscle development, but the dough also has endless opportunities to make learning fun!"

Materials

1/2 cup salt
2 cups water
Saucepan
Food coloring, tempera powder or Kool-Aid powder for color
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups sifted flour
2 tablespoons alum

Directions

Combine salt and water in saucepan and boil until salt dissolves.
Remove from heat and tint with food coloring, tempera powder or Kool-Aid.
Add oil, flour and alum.
Knead until smooth.
This dough will last 2 months or longer.

Picture And Word Collages

"School-aged children have always enjoyed looking at colorful pictures in magazines, coloring pictures and reading through Highlights and Time for Kids news magazines. In my classroom, I always kept these resources readily available for students to access; however, did you know that you can do so many much more with them at home?

Early literacy skills begin with exposure at home, and magazines are just one great resource you can use to teach your children how to recognize letters, colors and other academic skills."

Paper Bag Journals

"Fun journals or spiral notebooks are always exciting to pick out at stores, as well as colorful pens or mechanical pencils. Each year, I always incorporated hand-made journals into my classroom writing activities. Students would be provided with materials to make their own weathered, or antique journal, and special lined "scroll" paper would be used to provide space for writing. Students would be given a topic to write about, and they'd use the hand-made journal to record their ideas.

When doing a project like this at home, children can be involved in making the journals. However, if they're too young, parents can make them in advance and provide materials for the child to decorate them with (glitter, paper scraps for gluing on, beads, etc.)."

Nature-Inspired Creations

"Children love seashells. They are all different colors, shapes and sizes, and believe it or not, they are a great resource for crafts!

One craft that I loved to have my students make with shells were different animals. Sometimes they would use the shells to create an outline of the animal's shape. Once the outline was put together, students would glue it down to paper, draw a background picture to go along with the animal, and then they would be asked to write a short story about their animal. Other times shells were used to create a three-dimensional picture of an animal.

Remember, any natural material found along a walk in the park or scavenger hunt in the backyard can be used for this type of craft."

Food Necklaces

"All that you need for this craft is string and any dry food that has a hole in it (Fruit-Loops, Cheerios, macaroni noodles, etc). When teaching your child about patterns or colors, let them select what type of pattern to make (AB, ABC, ABB) and then provide plenty of options of dry food for them to select from when making their necklace. They can use the food items to create a necklace that represents a pattern they're learning about. Or, if you're teaching your child about primary colors (red, yellow, blue) you can be creative and use food coloring to add color to the dry foods (just a few drops, as you don't want to over-soak the food). Then, you can have them select all of the 'red noodles' when creating their necklace about the red color. In addition, the colors can be used as another way to show different patterns."

Joel Furches is a freelance writer and researcher for The Examiner and Logos Software, and also manages his own catalog of writing on Hub Pages. Joel is on the board of directors for Ratio Christi. He has a bachelors in Psychology and a Masters in Education.