10 more craft ideas for Spring

It may feel strange to be looking at Easter craft ideas when the dust has yet to settle from the Christmas festivities, but by planning ahead you could save yourself that last-minute dash to the shops. You may be able to pick up the things that you need when you’re out and about anyway, enlist the help of friends or family to source or collect materials, or have them delivered to your door by mail-order. And of course, you’ll save yourself the stress of that ‘what shall we make this week’ moment!

To get you started, here are 10 more craft ideas for spring (click here to view the original 10 spring crafts). And the first one should help all the families in your toddler group get organised too!

1. Balloon calendar
   Draw a balloon shape, photocopy onto coloured card and cut it out. Punch holes in the top and bottom. The children can then decorate the balloon and thread through a piece of string or curling ribbon. Add a calendar tab to the bottom and use sticky tape to hold it all in place on the back. For a fun, personal touch, you could cut out a photo of the child stick them in the 'basket' of the hot air balloon.
2. Wooden spoon puppet
   A wooden spoon is a ready-made head and body for a puppet and packs of them can be bought quite cheaply from supermarkets. Provide washable felt tip pens for the children to draw the faces. Put a happy face on one side and a sad face on the other so that they can talk about how they feel. Tie several short lengths of knitting wool together to form a hairpiece and stick this on the top with double sided sticky tape. The simplest method of clothing your puppet is to wrap a square of fabric around the neck to form a dress and secure with an elastic band or sticky tape. However, if you want to give it pipe-cleaner arms then wrap these around the handle, cut two T-shirt shapes out of felt or paper and glue them together around the body and arms.
3. Tartan placemat
   This could be used at a Burns night dinner on January 25th. Take a sheet of coloured card, cover it with glue and stick on strips of tissue paper. Help the children to produce a tartan by giving them three or four strips of one colour to lay down horizontally followed by three or four strips of a different colour to stick on vertically. Where the strips cross the colours will blend, giving a woven tartan appearance. Gluesticks work best for this craft, as PVA glue will cause the card to crinkle and the tissue paper colours to bleed. If it is to be used as a placemat it's worth laminating it if you can.
4. Cupcake decorating
   Food crafts are a firm favourite with toddlers, but you must CHECK FOR ALLERGIES before starting (most cakes contain egg and milk and may also contain traces of nuts). If you buy enough basic fairy cakes for each child to decorate two, they can have one for themself and one to share! Make glace icing (icing sugar and a tiny amount of water) thin enough to dollop from teaspoons, but thick enough to stay on the cakes. Put the icing in bowls and add some food colouring if you want to. Supply bowls of small sweets and '100s and 1000s' as decorations, remembering to keep a supply in reserve for late-comers. For the more adventurous, themed cakes could include hedgehog cakes using chocolate icing and chocolate buttons, piggy cakes with pink icing and marshmallows, sheep cakes with white icing and marshmallows and buzzy bee cakes with yellow and black icing and rice paper wings.
5. Valentine’s Day basket - February 14th
   Two paper plates folded in half and stapled together form a neat heart-shaped basket. Add a ribbon handle and decorate creatively! Inserting a small packet of Love Hearts or a few chocolates turns this into a sweet gift for a special person. This is just one of a range of paper plate craft photos from Claire Wells' Facebook group 'Parent Toddler Groups Together'. Join the group to see the rest of her photos.
6. Transport collage
   Simple coloured shapes (squares, rectangles and circles) can be stuck together to make trains or lorries and decorated with crayons or stickers. For an effective group mural, get each child to design a wagon and add it to the back of the train, or create their own lorry and add it to the 'traffic jam'. A roll of scrap wallpaper makes a cheap track or road.
7. Mustard and cress letters
   Mustard and cress seeds germinate within days and are therefore ideal for use with impatient toddlers. Take three or four sheets of kitchen paper towel and fold in quarters. This will give you a thick pad which you should still be able to cut with a sturdy pair of scissors. Trim into any shape you like. You might have a particular theme or you could use the child's initials. Lay on a piece of kitchen foil and let the children moisten it with water. Use a sports bottle to prevent flooding. They can then sprinkle on the mustard seeds or cress seeds and spread them out with their fingers. If they are kept warm and moist the seedlings will be ready to harvest a week later.
8. Mothering Sunday bouquet - April 3rd 2011
   There are many different crafty ways to make flowers but one of the simplest is just to cut out a paper flower shape, colour it in and attach it to a drinking straw with sticky tape. If you want an angled stem simply use a bendy straw, fold a double-sided foam sticky fixer over the end and stick the flower head on to that. Alternatively, poke the end of a green pipe cleaner through the centre of your flower and fold it over to secure. You can print off cheerful flowers in black and white, or colour, from www.dltk-holidays.com/spring/mspringmobile.html but several layers of tissue paper, muffin cases, coffee filters and segments from egg boxes can also be used to make attractive floral displays. If you have time you could create a vase to complete the gift.
9. Peg-leg donkey
   Cut out the legless donkey shape from stiff brown card and draw on the eyes. Knot together several lengths of brown or black knitting wool and stick on to form the tail. Clip on two wooden clothes pegs to give it legs. With a cloak made of a piece of folded paper, this could be a Palm Sunday craft. More detailed instructions can be found on the Playtime website at www.engagetoday.org.uk/playtime/crafts/a-peg-leg-donkey.
10. Easter cards - April 24th 2011
    Send greetings from your toddler group and perhaps an invitation to your Easter services too. You could make a very simple chick card by sticking on a large and a small yellow circle, two triangular wings, two black eyes and a folded orange diamond to form a beak. Alternatively, www.kidsdomain.com/craft/chickcrd.html has a template for a cute chick which has handprints for wings and uses paper fasteners to enable them to flap.

Need more ideas? Inspiration can come from books and websites but also from a trip to a scrapstore or craft shop. If you have toddlers of your own, you can adopt or adapt the best ideas from their nurseries. The cheapest activities will recycle junk that friends or family are throwing out - you will probably end up with an eye for 'creative' junk and start your own collection!

Last Updated 13 December 2010