All age craft Archives - Let their light shine!

Plant collage fun holiday family craft

Plant collage fun holiday family craft. Take a wander in your garden or some outdoor space and collect some leaves and petals. Only collect what you know to be safe and wash your hands after collecting and then again after making the collage.

It’s a good rule of thumb to teach children that they must not eat plants from the garden. Don’t eat any plant or part of a plant…. unless it is at a meal and on your plate!

Here’s a link to plants that are to be avoided – make sure you look at this list!

We collected leaves form our garden, a variety of shapes and colours and some rose petals and jasmine being careful to choose only leaves and flowers that we knew to be OK.

Once you have made your choice start to make your leaf collage using glue and sugar paper.

Above – the leaves and petals we collected. Below the collage on coloured sugar paper.

If you prefer to use edible plants only then herbs are a good choice. We used sage and basil with some rose leaves. (It’s still possible to have allergies to these plants but rare).

Plant collage using sage, basil and rose petals

Plant collage fun holiday family craft ideas

Use bright or dark backgrounds. Before gluing in place the leaves on the paper to see which you prefer

Experiment with showing the front and back of the leaves. The veins will be more pronounced on the underside and will ad texture to the collage

Layer the petals

Fill the paper or leave lots of space

Note down the date and the plants you used

Be careful of plants you don’t know, don’t eat any, pick what you know is safe.

This flower craft using paper cases is a fun, easy craft as an alternative to using real plants.

Crepe paper printing craft

Crepe paper printing craft ideas. Crepe paper and water make for great craft. It’s not exactly mess free but almost. You will have lots of soggy crepe paper at the end so you do need to have some newspaper and a tray to put your used crepe paper out of the way. Paper towels and some wipes are useful too as hands can get dye on them. But don’t let any of that put you off this lovely creative activity that really is suitable for all ages.

All you need

Water and some spray bottles (that have only ever been used for plain water)
Crepe paper cut into strips
Sugar paper (2 sheets for each picture)
Cover your table with newspaper
Have something on hand to put the wet crepe paper in to
Wipes and paper towels for hands

To make –

Take a sheet of sugar paper
Lay on crepe paper – let the children choose the colours they would like. They can layer them if they wish. They don’t have to cover the paper.
Spay with water (you’ll see the colours start to run. Experiment with just how wet you want the picture to be – too dry isn’t great but neither is too wet!
Place the second sheet of paper on top (like making a paper sandwich with crepe filling)
Pat down
Peel apart
Take the crepe paper off and throw away

Crepe paper printing in pictures

This is a great craft for toddlers. It doesn’t matter if they can’t operate the water bottle as the main point is to experiment with the colours and see how they mix and change

You can also develop the basic craft into an Easter themed craft by using egg shaped paper.

Easter egg shape decorated with crepe paper printing

You can also add the symbol of the cross using black crepe paper.

Older children can experiment with how they want the colours to look – like in the picture above with rays of light coming from the centre of the cross.

Enjoy being creative with colour with this craft. The pictures will need some time to dry so keep that in mind. But it is really fun so have a go at some crepe paper printing craft!

Here’s another Easter craft idea with a free printable – you could make both!

I used this crepe paper from Amazon. (Affiliate link – when you click and make a purchase I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you)

Cup Cake Cases Flower Wreath

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links which means if you click on the link and purchase the item I will receive commission at no extra cost to you.

A cup cake case flower wreath is a colourful craft to celebrate spring and summer. Paper cake cases are inexpensive and come in lots of colours. You can go for the really bright or the pastels or a mixture of the two. There’s two ways of going about making this – older children can have a go at making the flowers, selecting the colours they want to use and cutting the shapes themselves. Younger children can have fun choosing colour combinations and have an adult do the cutting for them (in a large group do this preparation ahead of time) Any age can glue the flowers onto the cardboard circle. The paper cases can be layered as in the photo above. Older children might like to shade the wreath. For example start with reds, then oranges and then yellows. Let them experiment first and then glue the finished piece.

All you need

Cardboard wreath
Glue
Scissors for older children to use (for toddlers an adult can do the cutting)
Cup cake cases
Petit four cases

To turn the cup cake cases into flowers you need to make a few folds and cut an arc – take a look at the gallery below to see how.. it’s easy..

Arrange the flowers any way you choose – if you have different sizes you can layer them. You can use plain colours or patterned cases. Here are some ideas.

Weaving Craft

Weaving craft is a great activity for an after school club for children aged 4-plus. It needs a bit of prep but is well worth the effort. We made these at our children’s club and everyone joined in; there was lots of concentration!

Try to have yarn of different colours so the children can make some choices. We used a double knitting weight for the centre of the flower and then changed to aran weight. But chunky or aran weight yarn for the whole flower would be great too. Just don’t use really fine yarn as it will take forever to complete. If you want to you can use ribbon which would look lovely (just make sure that it works and stays put – satin ribbon might be a bit slippery). It’s always a good idea to test out a craft activity and any materials you are hoping to use to double check that the craft is makeable.

All you need for the Weaving Craft

Paper plate (cut the petals – we have 11. It’s best to have an odd number as it makes the weaving easier. It’s always ‘over, under,with an odd number!’)
Yarn – we used Double Knitting for the inner circle and Aran for the outer circle. Look at the photo below to see the difference. It’s helpful to have the yarn in small amounts as this helps with the weaving.
Cellotape to secure the yarn at the back of the plate
Ribbon (optional)

How to make

Cut the petals – have a look at the photos to see how far to cut into the plate.
Thread the loom – use any colour but one that stands out will make a great contrast when you are weaving.
To start weaving knot the first colour of yarn at the centre and then start weaving alternating ‘over, under’.
Change colour as often as you like by knotting a new colour to the old colour.
Use the Aran weight yarn as the circle gets bigger.

Here’s a link to another craft using yarn that is also really fun to make.

I often buy yarn from Wool Warehouse – stylecraft DK comes in many colours and is very good. You can also find yarn in charity shops and ask friends and family for any small amounts they might have that you can use for crafts.

Bible town scene to make

Making a Bible town scene is one of my favourite Holiday Bible Club crafts. It fits with so many Bible stories as it is just a scene of a town. It’s fun to make and 3D.

All you need is

Square paper plate (needs to be quite sturdy)

Tissue paper/sugar paper

Background scene printed onto card – same size in width as the centre of the paper plate with about an inch of card that can be folded to make a flap which will be glued so the scene stands on the paper plate

Felt tips for colouring the scene

Square block of wood to make a house – doors and windows and outside steps to be added by the children

To Assemble the children need to –

Colour the background scene and stick onto paper plate to make a back drop
Add doors, windows and steps to house (wooden block) and glue onto the plate in the foreground
Add tissue paper/sugar paper to make paths/grass/sand

We bought the background scene from creativeforkids.com (as of 2023 I don’t think they sell it anymore.)