Group craft is an alternative to having everyone make something to take home. Some things really lend themselves to a big group make. Goliath to decorate with collage material, the Tower of Babel to either build with cardboard boxes or create a 2D version by sticking ‘bricks’ onto a roll of paper. Noah’s Ark makes a great large group craft too.
All you need
- Floor space or tables put together lengthways
- Roll of wall paper/lining paper spread out
- An outline of Noah’s Ark and the water
- Glue sticks
- Blue tissue paper shapes
- Blue crepe paper shapes
- Animal stickers (or animal pictures cut from magazines) or a mixture!
We just let children join in as they wished as the craft activity was set up during our free play time. We weren’t pernickety about the animals being in pairs!
The beauty of a group craft like this is that everyone owns it and you can display it afterwards and use it during the story time. If your group meets in a church building see if you can display what you’ve made for a few weeks for your church to see something that happens in the Toddler Group.
If you would rather have an open ended large group craft then just provide the paper roll (either on tables or on the floor) and wax crayons and collage materials. Challenge the group to cover the paper! Adults can find it quite difficult to just go ahead and create but it’s a good thing to do! Encourage adults and toddlers to chat about the colours, shapes and textures that they are using.
You can do a cover the paper challenge on a small scale too. Just have a selection of collage materials, glue and paper on the craft table.
