Super-Easy Crafting with Kids {Plus a GIVEAWAY}

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I love thinking up new ideas of crafts that Little Guy and I can make together. Sometimes I go online and surf all of the great blog posts that have simple projects. But, there are times when I'm just not feeling inspired. I've promised we'd do  project, yet I just can't think of anything to make and don't feel like looking for anything. I've found a great, inexpensive way to help on those days.



I'm not sure if you knew, but I won a full year of crafts from Freckles Crafts' One Year Anniversary/National Craft Month giveaway!!! What this equates to is one Freckles Craft Kit per month for the entire year. If you are not familiar with Freckles Crafts, you need to check them out.

These aren't your everyday craft kits. Each kit comes with EVERYTHING you will need to make the project. And I mean everything. It is pure heaven to be able to do a project with very little prep work!







Our first shipment came with three different craft kits: Bella the Butterfly, Betty the Bunny, and Bouquet of Buttons. After a nap and a snack on a cold and rainy day, I had Little Guy choose which he wanted to do. He decided on the Bouquet of Buttons after quite a bit of indecision.(Why didn't I just give him TWO choices?!) Our kit came with buttons, pipe cleaners, a pea pot, a little container of paint, paper "grass", a Styrofoam ball, and even a paint brush - we literally needed NOTHING of our own to make this. Oh, and did I mention that everything in the kits is washable and non-toxic?

   











I'm very glad that I took the time to read the instructions for all three crafts while he was asleep. The first step is to paint the pea pot, let it dry, then paint it again. Yeah, not going to work with my little guy. So, I managed to come up with a plan. He put the first coat of paint on the pot. While it was drying, we counted all of the buttons, talked about the colors and shapes, then sorted them into piles based on their size. The step after the painting was to sort the buttons so we would have one pile for each button flower we would make. For instance, each of the four large flowers needed a giant button, a large button, and a medium button. By the time we were done sorting, it was time to put on the second coat of paint. Crisis averted!



Now, I have to tell you that it took some will power for me to not help him do the painting. There were missed spots and areas that had big splats of paint on them that were going to take forever to dry. But it is so important to me to not "show off" how much better than him I can do things. That's not what this is about. I think that's why most kids stop doing some of the things they loved in their toddler and early preschool years. Why should they struggle to do something that's not going to turn out all that great when there's an adult right here who can so clearly do it perfectly and with very little effort? So, I stood back and praised the great job he was doing. I didn't wait until he was not looking to "fix" it up, either. He'd probably have noticed and, if not this time, he would eventually. What's that say about all of the praise I just gave him???



Sorry, just had to get that little lecture out of my system!



Back to the project. While the pot was drying for the second time, we started to make the flowers. We had to thread the buttons onto the pipe cleaners. I knew that Little Guy doesn't have the fine motor skills needed for this step, so I came up with a way for us to do it together. He knows about teamwork, and so I told him we needed to be a team because we had a lot of flowers to make (seven) and working together would be best. My job was to thread the buttons on the pipe cleaners. His job was to push the buttons all the way down the pipe cleaners and then twist them to hold our flowers in place once all of the buttons were on. It worked out perfectly - he didn't even seem to want to try to thread them.



The pot was dry enough to work with after we finished making the flowers. All that was left to do was put the Styrofoam ball into the pot, poke the pipe cleaner stems of the flowers into the ball, and then place the "grass" in the pot to hide the ball. All of these were done by Little Guy. I only helped by pushing the flowers a little further into the ball so they'd stay.





He was so proud of himself! I placed them prominently on a table in our living room where he can reach them. Now, normally, that would mean that the project would have been ruined about five minutes after I set it down. But he's so darn happy about the fact that he made this that he is very careful with it. Whenever someone comes over, he runs to get his flowers to show them off and have our guest smell them. After they do so, he says, "Smells like buttons!"



The craft kits average about $5 each, so they're very affordable to have on hand. I love the Craft Kit Gift Tote! You get five craft kits, a nice tote to keep them in (that can be personalized with a name for no extra charge), and a personalized card for just $30. What a wonderful gift. I'd LOVE to receive this (hint, hint!!!)



WIN! Now for the great news - Freckles Crafts is going to give one of my readers a $15 Gift Certificate to use on anything you want in their store!



***Please leave a SEPARATE comment for each entry and leave your email in at least one of your entries. I will be checking the validity of all entries before I choose the winner with Random.org. If you say you follow, please do so or you risk having your entry deleted! Open to residents of the U.S. and Canada.Giveaway will end on April 28th at 11:59 pm. Winner will be notified with an email and in a post on this blog. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn.



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* I was not compensated for this post. I received a year's worth of free crafts by winning a giveaway from Freckles Crafts. This review was written because I wanted to share a really awesome place to find some great craft kits.