When we went camping last weekend, I tried to take crafts that didn’t require a lot of supplies to pack. Here are few ideas you can use over Thanksgiving or any time of the year.
1) Pet Rocks
Pet rocks are pretty self-explanitory. Find large rocks (or mushrooms as Ainsley did) in the yard. Paint them any way you want. I used a trash bag opened at the seams as a table cloth. Once the kids were done and the rocks dry, I collected anything that wasn’t trash then folded up the whole garbage bag and threw everything else away. It made for very easy clean up.
Martha has some great ideas here for making rock critters.
2) Q-tip Trees
We used q-tips to make these trees. If you don’t want to bring q-tips, you could also use thumbprints.
3) Handprints/Footprints.
I like to mark the passage of time by recording my children’s handprints and footprints every so often. I try to do it annually, but sometimes the years slip away from me. I took advantage of a captive audience and their paint last weekend and captured their handprint sizes last week. We didn’t have a big tub of paint so we simply applied paint to their appendages with a paint brush. My biggest tip is to apply a thin layer… a thick one makes their hands slippery and you don’t get as clear an image.
4) Leaf Rubbings
I taught the kids how to do leaf rubbings. Ainsley especially liked that you could make the leaves different colors. We also rubbed some ferns we found during our hike.
5) A Thankgiving turkey
If you have some scissors on hand, here’s a great tutorial from Enchanted Learning on making a Thanksgiving Turkey. If it’s not Thanksgiving time, you could do the same idea but make a flower… cut the circle and glue (you can make a simple glue paste with flour and water) petals around the outside.
6) Painting with pine needles
The Disney Family Fun website suggests using pine needles to paint snowflakes on wrapping paper. This would be a fun activity to do with your kids on regular craft or construction paper. Acorn tops could be used to make circles too.
7) Family portraits.
Have your kids make portraits of each other paying careful attention to eye and hair color. Or have them draw a family member and have you guess who they drew. Ainsley was ecstatic to realize Natalie had drawn a picture of her.
8) Family Handprints
I don’t have a picture of this one, but start with the person with the largest hand. Have each person make a handprint on top of the last person’s layering the largest to smallest. Label each hand for posterity.
9) Hand(or foot) print Animals
Draw simple animal shapes and complete them with your handprint or footprint, like this one from Meet the Dubiens
or this penguin
There are several more ideas here…
10) Paint free-style
Just let them paint. Anything they want. My kids aren’t given free-reign over paint that often so just having the freedom to do what they want with it is a treat. You might be surprised with what they come up with.
Of all the things we took last weekend the crayons, paint and paper were used the most. It just goes to show the simplest things in life can be the best.
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss