Looking for an easy paper craft for kids today? Look no further! I have an free adorable printable paper craft toy to share - Monkey Puppets! These cute little monkey puppets are so fun, my boys could hardly wait for me to finish making them. Cheese kept point at the laptop screen and babbling toddler gibberish as I was putting together the printable. Needless to say, they could hardly wait to get their hands on them. I recommend that you print out these monkeys, assemble, hand them to your kids and fix dinner as fast as you can while they play quietly. (Because quiet moments seem to be few and far between when you have little ones!)
Today, my husband Joel has a fun activity to share with you for your kids. A while back, he made the Printable Road Maps for Toy Cars craft and it became a reader favorite for several weeks. Because the printable roads were so popular, he created a printable train tracks project. He also has an additional project in the works to add to these. It should make an appearance within the next month or two. Sign up for email notifications on the right side of the page to make sure that you don't miss out on the next printable project!
Toy trains are really fun. I've always enjoyed playing with them, but the sets can be really pricey. Not only that, but different sets are often incompatible and don't offer much variation in the ways that you can set them up. Enter printable train tracks...
With this set, you can create each panel in whatever way seems the most interesting to you and your kiddo. Then, you can arrange the panels in infinitely different arrangements. All it will cost you is a little ink, paper and time. So, here we go!
Next, cut each piece out of the printout by trimming around the edges of each piece. You can use any cutting method that works for you. I chose a paper trimmer for the straight cuts, scissors for the long curves and an Exacto knife for the smaller pieces.
After that, take a medium-sized cardboard box and cut it so that you have some large panels and some small panels. I chose to make 4 large and 4 small by leaving the top flap on each side of the box. If a portion of one of the panels is damaged, you can trim that part off. They don't all need to be standard sizes.
Now, you begin the coolest part. Arrange the pieces on the panels in whatever arrangement looks the most fun. You can always trim the long, straight pieces to whatever length you need.
When you have the arrangement you like, glue it down. You can use a glue stick or brushed school glue, if needed, but spray adhesive is the quickest and cleanest method. I started off with a glue stick, but switched to spray adhesive on the second panel.
Once you have all of the panels created, begin arranging them and start playing. After a while, rearrange and you have a whole new track!
Tip: After I create one panel, I line up the edge pieces on the next panel so that they line up perfectly when placed next to each other. This is especially useful on the large panels.
Another tip: Checking out Printable Road Maps for Toy Cars before you dig into this project will be helpful, as the idea was first developed there. The 2 projects complement each other well and many of my (Joel's) future projects will expand on these ideas. Make sure you sign up for email notifications so that you don't miss them.
I have a fun little project for you guys today - a miniature Jack-in-the-box paper Christmas craft. So fun and cute! This little Jack-in-the-box is easy enough for little ones with scissor skills, but still fun for adults as well. Plus, there's a free printable to help you make this cute little guy. What more could you ask for?
Simple instructions are included on the printable, but I've included more detailed instructions on this post, as well. It's not required, but I would recommend printing out the Jack-in-the-box on card stock to make it more sturdy.
Cut out and fold Jack on the dotted lines, accordion style. Make sure to start the fold underneath Jack. The first fold needs to be folded behind him.
When folding the box, fold inward at each dotted line.
Next tape the two tabs underneath both green squares together.
Add a strip of tape to the bottom tab of the folded Jack, and tape to the bottom of the inside of the box.
Then add a strip of tape to the small tab on the side of the red box and fold inward. Tape to the inside of the box.
Finally, add one more tape strip to secure the bottom two tabs underneath the box.
Fun, right? Mac begged me for days to make this. He and I both made a Jack-in-the-box. And then he stole mine. He really did.
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Banners are so much fun, don't you agree? This banner was beyond fun to make. Why? Because it uses glitter and glue! This is the perfect opportunity to unleash your creativity and fuel your glitter obsession. I mean, how often do you get to do a project where you can doodle with an excessive amount of glue AND glitter at the same time? That's right. Not that often. The beauty of this project is that it can be as easy or as involved as you would like it to be. Either way though, the most time consuming part of this project is they drying time. And if you're not so fond of the banner idea, you can always skip the twine step and use the glitter-glue ornaments on your tree. By the way, I made the chalkboard talk bubble that you see pictured below. You can find the tutorial here.
Supplies needed:
- glitter
- school glue (I used the clear kind, but the white kind works just as well)
- twine
- wax paper
- acrylic spray
- toothpick
- ornament hooks or paper clips
Start by laying out a sheet of wax paper.
Using the glue, draw various shapes onto the wax paper. Squeeze the glue bottle firmly and pour slowly to create thick lines of glue. (Avoid bubbles in the glue as much as possible).
Avoid separations in the glue (like the one pictured)
Use toothpick to connect separated sections of glue
Make sure that each glue shape connects from beginning to end of shape. If the glue separates into sections, use a toothpick to connect the separated sections or add more glue to those areas.
Cover thoroughly with glitter. Allow to dry on a flat and level surface, preferably overnight. Once glitter and glue shapes have dried, spray with a coat acrylic spray. (This significantly reduces the glitter mess when handling shapes)
Gently peel the dried shapes off the wax paper. (Make sure glue is completely dry before peeling off the wax paper, otherwise the shapes tend to curl)
Originally I hung this on our piano.
Hang (tape, tie, whatever way you choose) the twine in the desired spot to display the banner.
Using the ornament hooks (or paperclips) hook each glitter-glue shape and hang on various parts of the twine. If you have trouble with the ornaments staying in place, try hooking through the twine threads.
Easy, right?
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Hey friends. I'm on a small break because I had surgery yesterday. So today my husband, Joel, has a fun activity to share with you guys. Didn't know he was so crafty, right? Yeah, he is. He's pretty cool like that. Well...maybe not crafty...more like...resourceful. (I don't think guys like to be considered crafty.) So check out his post below:
Boys love cars. I still like playing with Hot Wheels. I'm not sure if that makes me wierd, but if it does, I'm cool with it. Both Mac and Cheese like to play with cars. It really does start young.
Those cool car playsets make it even more fun by giving the play context and allowing for more imaginative interaction. I love those things, but they are so expensive and they get old quickly.
Another (slightly wierd and nerdy) thing that I'm into is "print-and-play games". These are board/card/miniature games that you just download in PDF form, print it, cut it and start playing!
So, I decided to merge these ideas to make a fun, flexible and inexpensive (^_^) way to get your car on, do a fun craft with your kiddos and save some $$$!
Supplies:
- our custom PDF: SoHeresMyLife.com Printable car town
- cardstock to print it on (regular paper works, but not as well)
- scissors (an Exacto knife and a cutting board are handy, too)
- some sort of glue (glue sticks or spray glue work best)
- medium to large cardboard box
Once you have the PDF printed out on cardstock, cut the road pieces out. Don't leave any white around the edges.
Then, cut the buildings out. Cut along the black lines. Don't cut on the gray dotted lines.
With the buildings cut out, fold along those gray dotted lines. Lightly dragging an Exacto knife along the dotted line to score it will help your folds be easier and straighter, but it's not required.
Apply a light amount of glue to each of the 4 smaller blank panels, then fold the building together. Each should take less than a minute to dry and be pretty solid.
Next, we need to make panels out of the cardboard box to glue our roads to. It's not necessary to cut every panel of your box off. What I did is separate each side of my box, then cut the top panel off of each side, leaving the bottom one. This allows you to have some larger panels for bigger pieces and smaller panels for interconnecting pieces.
Take your road pieces and arrange them on one of the big panels. Try to make a fun looking arrangement that has road pieces ending along the edges so that you can connect various panels together to make a larger city map. You can trim down the straight road pieces as needed to make them fit well. I recommend only cutting straight roads that end along the edges. If you keep to this, it will help your panels to line up a little better.
Once you have planned your arrangement, it's time to glue the pieces on-by-one. Make sure that the glue on the bottom of each piece goes all the way to the edges so that they won't peel up and get dog-eared. Be careful to place each road piece so that there aren't gaps between them and line up the white lines just to keep things tidy and lined up. Repeat with each of the large and small panels.
The best thing about this project is that you don't have to have everything put together before your kiddos start playing. If you're careful to not use too much glue when gluing roads and buildings, you're ready to play in less than 2 minutes after assembling a piece. In fact, you can assemble a few panels, let the kids play, then do a couple more some other day. Also, feel free to print as many additional pages of road pieces or buildings as you need to create the layout you have in mind.
You could also add a set of plastic road signs & various city props. We picked up a small set of these from a dollar store near our house. This adds to the immersive experience. With the town all set up, this should keep your kiddo entertained for quite a while. Show them how to rearrange the panels and change the layout, also.
With a modular playset like this, it's easy to pick up quickly and doesn't take up much room when stored. Now that I have this all set up, though, I'm going to go play with it for a while before Mac gets back from hanging out with his grandpa. :)
One more link for the Printable Road Maps, in case you missed it earlier.
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