Paper Crafts for Children

This cute and friendly Jack O Lantern craft for children uses the whole paper plate, so there is no waste.

You will need;
1 Paper plate
Some black paper or card
Tissue paper in orange and green
Glue stick
Scissors

Cut a crescent shape from the top and bottom of the plate.

Trim the crescents into leaf shapes.

Tear the orange tissue into squares. Spread glue onto the plate and stick the tissue pieces on in a
random mosaic. Fold over and glue any pieces that hang over the edge of the plate.

Tear the green tissue into smaller squares than the orange tissue and glue to the leaf shapes.

Stick the leaves under the plate.

Cut the face pieces from the black paper or card and glue to the plate.

Being able to create something out of paper just by folding it is a cool craft in itself – but even more cool when it jumps!

Start with a square of paper. Fold the opposite sides together, unfold and repeat with the other sides. You will now have two creases going across the square.

Fold each of the four corners to the center where the crease cross each other.

Fold the two top edges to the center line.

Fold the triangle at the bottom up.

Fold the two bottom corners to the middle of the bottom edge.

Fold the bottom section up.

On that section you just folded up – fold the top half of it back down to make the frog’s legs.

Fold a small part of the top point down to create the head. Add some eyes so she can see where she is going.

To help her jump, push down near the bottom and slide your finger away from the frog.

This festive craft is not just a great paper craft for children – it is an any age party decoration. You need to gather up the brightest crepe paper you can find, some scissors, string and glue and then you can get started.

	Cut two strips off the end of a roll of crepe paper. Cut a small piece – up to the first fold from each roll to be used as a wrapper in a later step.
	Cut narrow strips into the thick piece.
	Cut the ends of the folded strips open at the end the narrow strips are cut from.
	Thread string through the folded end. Fold the small piece in half length-ways.
	Scrunch the tassel around the string and wrap the folded small piece of crepe paper around and glue in place as pictured.

Download the printable version of the Tutorial – PDF Worksheet – Crepe Paper Tassels.

This is one of the very versatile paper crafts for children. You can make patterns, pictures, even write words by scraping into the paint. You just need some paper and paint, and some tools to do the scraping. Tools like a piece of card, the end of a brush or even fingers will do!

To make a more dramatic scraped paint image, first coat the paper with a base layer of acrylic paint. If you are using just one layer of paint and scraping through to the paper, then any sort of paint is fine.

	Once the first layer is dry paint a small area on top. I have painted and scraped each stripe before starting the next one.
	While the paint is still wet scrape into the paint with a tool, like the end of a paint brush or a peice of card.
	You can scrape patterns or words into the wet paint.

Cut bits from the finished piece for all sorts of paper crafts.

Download the printable version of the tutorial – PDF Worksheet – Scraped Paint

See some of the things we made with just half of this decorated paper at Scraped Paint Decorated Things.

Another of the easy and speedy paper crafts for children. You need some paper, scissors and a bit of sticky tape.

	Cut slits in an oblong piece of paper, about three-quarters of the way across the paper.
	Roll up the paper and secure the roll at the bottom with a piece of tape.
	Carefully pull up the center of the tree to bring the ‘branches’ up.
	Arrange the branches by bending them, rolling them and cutting extra slits in them.
	To make a stand for the tree cut a circle out of paper or thin card. Cut a slit to the center and then a circle from the center about the size of the tree trunk.
	Form a cone around the base of the tree and secure it with tape. You can also made a trunk for the tree with another piece of paper decorated with crayon rubbings.

Download the printable version of the tutorial – PDF Tutorial – Paper Tree.

Have a look at the finished paper trees that we crafted.

Children love this art technique and it makes a great base for lots of paper crafts. You just need paint and plain paper.

	Fold your piece of paper in half, open it, and drip or paint some paint on one half of the paper.
	Close the paper together and press it so the paint gets all squashed together between the two sides of paper. Then open the paper up.
	The mirror picture is now revealed. The pattern created is called a mirror picture as one side is a mirror image of the other.

Download the printable version of the tutorial. PDF Tutorial – Mirror Picture.
Check out some of the artwork created by our children using mirror pictures at Mirror Picture Artwork and at Mirror Picture Butterfly.