Summer Prize Picnic-Arts and Crafts Edition

In spite of my previous post about art versus craft, and my intention to do more open ended projects with L, I love crafts. We do crafts together now as often as he'll go for it, but I am hopefully looking forward to the day when one or both of my children are as in to crafting as I am.

Since we haven't done a lot of crafting lately, (because there's been quite a bit of other stuff going on around here,) I thought I'd mention a few of my favorite kids' crafting books. I promise I'll get around to posting something other than book recs soon. :) I've got lots of things in mind to write about, but not a lot of time at the moment.

We own a number of books in the Williamson Kids Can series, and they're all pretty great, but I especially wanted to recommend EcoArt (Earth Friendly Art and Craft Experiences for 3-9 year olds,) and The Kids' Multicultural Art Book (Art and Craft Experiences from Around the World).

I recently picked up a copy of Great Big Holiday Celebrations (Activities for Celebrating Major Holidays With Young Children,) and it has lots of good ideas in it. It's a Totline book, which we have several of. They are aimed at preschool teachers or daycare providers, I guess, but most of the activities are equally appropriate for home. (I love love love the Totline Theme-a-saurus books.)

I ordered the Big Book of Bible Crafts (100 Bible-Teaching Crafts Using Economical, Easy-to-Find Supplies from Amazon a while back. It says the crafts are suitable for ages 3-12, but most of the projects are a little more involved than my son (4 y/o,) will typically go for. The projects are nice though, and the templates are all provided (none of that draw your own pattern and enlarge it to size nonsense.) If your kiddo is a wee bit older, or has a better attention span than mine, this is a good one.

FamilyFun magazine is one of my all time favorite magazines, and they're a great source of seasonal craft ideas. They also have a few books, and they're all awesome. We've checked them out from the library several times each.

One crafty tip I wanted to share is this: Before I had kids, I was an avid scrapbooker. These days I don't really have the time or energy for it, but my supplies have been given a new life as crafting materials for my son. He thinks all the paper punches are so cool, and he likes to punch millions of little trains or flowers or whatever, which is a good motor skills activity. He loves stickers, and the scrapbooking cardstock makes nicer drawings and collages than construction paper or printer paper. If you have a pile of unused scrapbooking stuff lying around, let the kids have a go at it.

If you'd like to find lots more crafty inspiration, check out http://abcand123learning.blogspot.com/2009/06/picnic-table-talk-hot-wyre-for-mom.html.