Paper Crafts for Children

Tis the season to be crafty!

	Paper Strip Bauble Create these beautiful decorations from very simple materials.
	Candy Cane Reindeer A fun craft to create and also a cool little gift.
	Santa Star Santa is the star of this paper craft for children
	Toilet Paper Roll Snowman Put your rubbish to crafty use
	Concertina Angel This is a beautiful Christmas paper craft
	Paper Cone Christmas Tree Make a forest of trees with this cute craft
	Paper Cone Santa Print out the template for this Santa or design your own based on the process.
	Egg Carton Christmas Tree Recycle your egg cartons in a most decorative way.
	Christmas Greeting Garland Keep the children busy decorating a garland to greet friends and family.
	Hand and Foot Shape Reindeer Trace a foot, and print some hands to create this cute reindeer.
	Mini Envelope Advent Calendar Your children can make their own version of this fun Christmas tradition.
	Christmas Shape Printed Paper Just one way of creating decorated paper for your Christmas presents and cards.
	Hand Print Santa Perfect for making Christmas Greeting Cards.
	Recycled Egg Carton Decorations Our children made these years ago and they have been on our tree every year since then.
	Slotted Christmas Bauble These are quite lovely decorations, make them from childrens art work and they would make a great gift!
	Paper Cup Santa Boot A little bit odd, but a lot of fun.
	Paper Cup Christmas Bells A very elegant craft for children to have a go at.
	Decorating artwork with santa hats As well as this being a really great decorating idea, I loved that it was a complete surprise for me.
	Paper chain Christmas tree This is a much better use of paper chains than just trying to make a long garland with them
	Easy crepe paper wreath Nice gluely fun with this one, and then something special to hang on your door
	Paper plate Christmas candy Perfect for decorating a wall of a classroom. Each candy would be different, and together they would all look fantastic
	Paper plate santa Every Christmas house needs one of these on their wall!
	Popsicle sticks snowflake A simple idea that just works really well
	Cup cake paper wreath There are so many ways for children to decorate the paper cups for this wreath
	Rudolf the red nosed toilet roll reindeer A real character for your Christmas crafts and decor
	Wooden Peg Rudolf Oh what a cute Christmas craft
	Crepe paper Christmas tree So pretty!

It is pretty spooky how a few folds and a few cuts creates an awesome web!!

	Start with a square piece of paper and fold it in half across the diagonal so that you have a triangle. Fold the triangle in half again so that you have a smaller triangle, and fold it in half some more times.
	Trim off the uneven section at the bottom of the triangle, if you trim it as a curve it is quite effective. Cut into the triangle as pictured.
	Open the paper up to reveal your spider web design.
	After you have tried your first one, I am sure that like us, you will have lots of fun experimenting to see how effective different patterns are.

A great result from all the paper crafting the children have done over the years – paper crafted homework ideas are easy to come by and easy to do!

And they have an enthusiastic helper in me – well I was not allowed to help too much, but I happily tore paper up and gathered materials.

Assignment one – communicate your interests visually. Football is one of the interests, so he made a papier mache football with interests drawn and written on it.

Assignment two – display an idiom.
She chose ‘Put Your Foot in Your Mouth’ and also used papier mache in a covered shoe box.

All you need is a piece of photocopy size paper, and a few folds later you have a puppet – a very wide mouth puppet! I have popped all the steps into a worksheet that you can download and print, as well as summarised here.

	Fold a peice of photocopy size paper into three so that it is long and skinny.
	Fold it again into four sections so that it forms a concertina.
	Add details to the top layer. Your fingers go in the space created between the layers of paper. Your thumb goes in the space in the bottom layer and then you can open and close the mouth really wide.!
	Once again my daughters attempt is much better than mine!

I love that this craft has a useful purpose as well as looking great in the kiddies rooms, and you get to do some recycling too.

You need a sturdy shoebox, 2 or 3 empty card rolls, newspaper torn into small strips, glue and paint.

Cut the card rolls into thirds and place on your shoe box lid in two lines. If your box is smaller you may think two rows of three looks better.

Secure the toilet rolls to the lid using some of the strips of newspaper dipped in glue. Use long thin pieces to cover the top of the toilet rolls making sure you smooth them down well. Continue to cover the rest of the lid with the strips of newspaper until you have three layers over the entire lid. I don’t wait for each layer to dry as I am too impatient. I think of this as a basic form of papier mache.

Make sure you don’t fold the paper under the rim of the lid as you will make it smaller and it won’t fit on the box.

Leave to dry thoroughly.

Paint the box and lid with a good craft paint (if you are going to use a light coloured paint, you may like to use white paper on your last layer of papier mache so the words won’t show through). Leave to dry. To make it even hardier, and also if you have used a cheaper poster paint, you might also want to seal it with a craft varnish.

This colorful character is a hoot!

You will need an empty toilet roll or roll of card, some colored paper in a variety of colours, a small piece of black card and a small piece of white paper.

Cover the toilet roll with a piece of colored paper. To make great owl ears, cut a half moon shape from the front and back of the top of the toilet roll so they meet at a peak at each side. Cut strips from colored paper long enough to circle the toilet roll. Make lots of cuts along the strips making sure you don’t cut right through. These will be the feathers of the owl. Carefully run the ‘feathers’ along the edge of a pair of scissors to make them curl. Be gentle as it is easy to pull them off. Glue each feather strip around the toilet roll leaving a gap in the front with the two top strips. For the tummy cut out an oval from colored paper and draw small ‘v’ shapes for feathers. Wait till you have made the eyes before gluing in place so you can work out the best place to put the tummy. Use the black card to cut out a pair of eyes. Using this as a template cut out another pair of eyes using the white paper and then cut them a little smaller. Draw in some pupils. Cut out a small triangle from orange and glue to the back of the eyes to form the beak.