Paper Crafts for Children

Keep an eye out for this cowboy – you might see a bit more of him around here! If you like the look of his hat – it is a great easy one to quickly craft up.

	Find a nice sturdy large piece of paper and draw a hat shape on it as pictured. To get the size right you can roughly trace around a cap for the inner circle size. Cut it out as indicated by the lighter card.
	Then you push the ‘top’ of the hat up and push the brim over your head – he looks like a bit of a cowboy to me!

I am so thankful for paper bags to use in paper crafts. You can use this technique to make all sorts of hat designs as well as this cute Thanksgiving turkey hat.

You will need a square bottom paper bag and some colored card or paper.

Open the paper bag and cut down the center side fold. Glue the sides down to strengthen the hat.

Cut five circles from the colored card and cut one of them in half to become the wings.

Glue the circles together to form the body of the turkey.

Draw in the eyes and glue on the beak.

Glue the turkey to the bottom of the bag.

Check the size of the hat you need by popping it on the child’s head and make a mark.

Cut feather shapes from the card and staple in place at the top of the bag up to the head size mark.
You may need to cut the bag down if it is too long.

We have made paper plate masks for lots of occasions over the years. Because the paper plate is already the right size and shape, it is super easy to use as a base for a mask.

	Most of our masks were decorated with pencils but you could use felt tip pens or paint too.
	Animals have been a very popular theme in our household.
	And a paper plate mask can be created by all ages!

We’ve been on a bit of a dress up theme around here lately.

This is easy and fun, and very very handy as part of a dinosaur or monster costume

The hardest part of this one for us was to hang onto two empty tissue boxes. Once we had managed to save the boxes. We just cut some slits around the holes in the top of the boxes to enable some feet to push into the box. We painted the boxes and glued on some claws. The final step is to add some scrunched up pieces of paper into the boxes to make a nice comfy space for feet.

We approach any opportunity to dress up with enthusiasm, and usually lots of paper to make our costumes. This opportunity was to go as your favorite character from a book. There was no question who that was for our daughter – Will from Rangers Apprentice. That character called for arrows!

A bit of scavenging in the garden found the stalks from agapantha flowers – they are straight and easy to cut – perfect!

We cut a slot in each end of the stalk. At one end we slotted an arrow head cut from cardboard.

At the other end we cut a sort of feather shaped end from card. We also cut a shape in it to allow it to fit over the stalk. It is also pushed into the slot cut in the stalk.

Repeat a few times and some fabulous arrows. Not pictured here, but we also made a great bow from some plaited wool and a nice bendy bit of grape vine.