I’m Katyayani, the mom behind the scenes of these activities. I’m a stay at home mom of two energetic boys who are 4 years old and 4 months old and a Bank Management graduate.
When my elder son was around 2 and a half years, I started art and craft activities with him. The reason being when you have kids you need ideas to keep them occupied and not get bored. Arts and crafts are the best things to do when you have the right expectations. Try these 10 hands on activities with your kids, in order to overcome those hours of boredom. All these activities take around half an hour and would be perfect for the upcoming summer vacation.
The list of activities that I’m going to share, are –
- Finger painted Rainbow
- 2D figurines with popsicle sticks
- Activity based learning of sea animals through textured painting
- Garden art with fork impressions
- Spooky skeleton with ear buds
- Creating a lobster through hands and foot impression
- Finger painted dinosaur
- Making a Santa Clause using wick
- Apple painting with lady’s finger
- Decorating a Christmas tree
Let’s see all of them in detail –
Finger painted rainbow
We drew outlines for the rainbow and my son finger painted each layer of rainbow in its respective colour. And for the cloudy effect we stuck cotton to the clouds.
2D figurines with popsicle sticks
We had these store bought coloured popsicle sticks. We decided to do some simple figurines and we ended up with a colourful fish and a dragon fly.
Activity based learning of sea animals through textured painting
We drew outlines of the sea animals and using fevicol we stuck semolina on it. Once it was dried, we painted the animals with some bright colours. We also used wobbly eyes for the animals for more fun. We learnt names of the colours and sea animals at the same time.
Garden art with fork impression
We made this garden art by dipping the fork in paint and taking impression of it to disguise as plants and grass. And we used cotton for the cloudy effect. And some free hand painting for the sun and stem of the plants.
Spooky skeleton with ear buds
We made this pattern of spooky skeleton figure with cotton ear buds. We used fevicol to stick the buds to the paper. And the background was painted black for the spooky effect.
Creating a lobster through hands and foot impression
We painted hands and foot with red colour and took impression of it in this way.
With some free hand painting and wobbly eyes we completed this lobster.
Finger painted dinosaur
My son was crazy about dinosaurs. And this is so simple. We drew the outline, painted the dinosaur and for dinosaur’s pattern on the skin we used finger painting.
Making a Santa Clause with wick
We drew the outline of Santa Clause. Coloured him and used wick and fevicol for the beared face.
Apple painting with lady’s finger
We drew outline of an apple and with lady’s finger dipped in paint we created the impression and covered the whole apple.
Decorating a Christmas tree
We took print outs of the tree and decorative things, cut them in desired shape and stuck one side of the double tape at their back. My son was supped to peel the other side of the double tape and stick them wherever he wished to and decorate the tree.
All of these activities were done on a sheet of paper. And so I have made a spiral bound book for my son so that these treasures can be stored with ease and without mess.
Some things to keep in mind while performing the activities :
- Allow them to explore the activity. Seeing the materials they may get overwhelmed to explore it.
- Sometime kids may not be interested in a particular activity. So wait for them to come back and don’t force them.
- There’s no necessary to complete an activity at a stretch. So, a single activity may take multiple days as well depending on the kid.
- Kids are messy, so be ready to clean the after mess.
I hope this will be helpful to moms out there who are running out of ideas to keep their kids occupied.