Suggestions for young crafters

[GinaLin]

I am hoping some of the wonderful people here can help me with planning some activities. We have a craft night at church and have been crafting together on a monthly basis for a little over a year. I love the fact that our group ranges in age from about 7-85. Last month we decided to start planning some activities to appeal to the younger girls (ages 7-11). For February the girls all needed decorated boxes to take for their Valentine parties so that was our activity. I have tons of experience with little kids but not as much with this age group. I would love to have any suggestions you might have of things that girls in this age group might enjoy. All the girls have moms that are stampers and scrappers so they are familiar with using a lot of the basic tools.

Thanks in advance for your time!

[RiverIsis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GinaLin

I am hoping some of the wonderful people here can help me with planning some activities. We have a craft night at church and have been crafting together on a monthly basis for a little over a year. I love the fact that our group ranges in age from about 7-85. Last month we decided to start planning some activities to appeal to the younger girls (ages 7-11). For February the girls all needed decorated boxes to take for their Valentine parties so that was our activity. I have tons of experience with little kids but not as much with this age group. I would love to have any suggestions you might have of things that girls in this age group might enjoy. All the girls have moms that are stampers and scrappers so they are familiar with using a lot of the basic tools.

Thanks in advance for your time!

I think you are going along the right lines of doing things that related to the season/holiday coming up.

March - St Patrick's (you could something with an Irish Blessing), Easter, Spring
Bookmarks? Eggs? Easter Baskets? PomPom animals? RSVP Pens?

Are you looking for themes/ projects or both?

[irishjen]

altering notebooks, clipboards, chalkboards would be so much fun. They love playing school and taking notes!!

[GinaLin]

Great ideas, thank you so much. I knew I would get help here! I hadn't really thought of doing the monthly themes either. I just did the one in February because I knew they all needed the same thing for school. I love the ideas for the bookmarks, RSVP pens and pom pom animals. I really like the theme idea too. I taught preschool for a very long time and I still have some resourses I might be able to adapt.

Last month was a trial run and the girls had so much fun and they were so excited to be included.

I've got my list started and would welcome any more ideas anyone else might have.

[debbiemom23cs]

When my daughter's where young and in girl scouts, they loved making altered notebooks. They could decorate a special little notebook just for themselves. Plus one time we made magnets. My older daughter liked that one alot because she put her magnets in her locker.

[transprntbutterfly]

altered picture frames, small scrapbook pages, CAS cards.

I just recently did an event with girl scouts about the age you are dealing wiht and we did a small scrapbook page for their scouting scrap book and we did a simple card which many of the girls made extras of. I used SU's Sincere Salutations so the girls could pick the sentiment they wanted.

[GinaLin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by transprntbutterfly

altered picture frames, small scrapbook pages, CAS cards.

I just recently did an event with girl scouts about the age you are dealing wiht and we did a small scrapbook page for their scouting scrap book and we did a simple card which many of the girls made extras of. I used SU's Sincere Salutations so the girls could pick the sentiment they wanted.

I have that stamp set too. Does each girl have their own scouting scrapbook or is it one for the entire group?

Magnets or other magnetic objects would be good a little later. Most of the girls will be starting middle school next year.

[Cook22]

If you can get cheap felt, any young girl will love making a bag. With something like a Crop-a-Dile it's easy to punch the holes for them to oversew it. Don't try it with any other type of punch, though, just take my word for that. Then they can decorate it with some beads, cut out flowers, whatever...
Bookmarks have already been mentioned, they're great.
Mobiles. I did one that was the life-cycle of a butterfly, and another one which was sea life. If you have suitable dies or a Cricut or similar (which I didn't), it would make that type of idea quite easy.
A good site to check out for ideas is EnchantedLearning.com. They have a lot of free stuff, but when I minded my friend's two kids I subscribed to it for the extras. Also have a look at the Fiskars site - they have a section with kids stuff. Once you see ideas, it's easy to adapt.
Finger puppets...I loved making those when I was that sort of age, and making up stories for them. I always used felt, but thin card is good too.

[Angelnorth]

Do you have access to a die cutter and Nesties for the group? Window swirlies/sun catchers are fun if you have a way to make frames for them and cutting cereal packet with Nesties is a cheap and easy way to make the frames. Even if the girls can't set up the cut they can turn the handle and kids love to see the shape pop out of a die cutter! Acetate is great for the centers if the girls are old enough to be OK to use Stazon but vellum is also a good choice and you can use ink like Brilliance to stamp on that so clean up is easier for the stamps etc (here's a Christmas ornament one in my gallery that was done with vellum so you can see what I mean).

If you do have a die cutter you can also cut felt in there with a lot of dies - things like flowers or bold butterflies would be great for the girls to use as embellishments on notebooks etc and they could maybe even attach them to hair elastics or barrettes.

If they enjoyed the box for Valentine's, maybe they could do boxes for themselves to keep little bits and pieces in at home? They could choose a theme if they wanted to (hair stuff, things they collected on vacation etc) or just make a pretty box that could be used to anything they decide later.

Have fun!

[sharron246]

what about making mini matchbooks.

They only need a long piece of card and some pages.

Then can then stamp and decorate the fronts.

[GinaLin]

More great ideas, thanks! I have made a list of all the projects suggested and I am going to try and make monthly themes. I showed some of the activities to one of the girls this morning and she was excited. I really appreciate all of your help.

We were originally planning to do something with the younger girls on a quarterly basis but they enjoyed it so much we are incorporating their activity in our monthly get together.

[GinaLin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sharron246

what about making mini matchbooks.

They only need a long piece of card and some pages.

Then can then stamp and decorate the fronts.

Would these be like mini albums or notepads? I think those would be fun for them to stamp.

[sharron246]

http://innucescrapbook.blogspot.com/...ook-album.html


design, for matchbook.

[GinaLin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sharron246

http://innucescrapbook.blogspot.com/...ook-album.html


design, for matchbook.

I haven't ever seen that before, it's very cute. Thanks for sharing the link.

[askagain]

My DD's girl scout troop has done some really fun crafts..... the two that come to mind that haven't been mentioned are origami (they used old magazines and catalogs) and making paper beads. For the beads, you cut strips of old wrapping paper, coat it with glue and roll them up. They had SO much fun with that one and it was recycling which they are all into.

Sounds like a fun group!

[CKMom]

I do a card ministry/craft night at church. This past week was a kid project. We did the post-it note pads w/ mini gel pen, and it was a big hit. I had 10 there ages 3-12. Got the template and idea from the gallery..

[sharron246]

Mini Photo Book Tutorials at Splitcoaststampers

I've just made this with my children.

I've enlarged the design, just remember to work out half way on the design then take 1/4" off that, measurement.

12 By 12 paper cardstock is score at 5 3/4 by 6 1/2.
then I still Scored the 2" and 2 1/4"

At the bottom.

Inside cards were 5 1/2" by 9"
We had 8 pages and used a brad to hold to the front of the book and didn't add any back pages.

Follow all other instructions.
I did add my folded over tab at the top and on some and it looked great.

We added tabs, flowers, stickers and loads more to the card my lot were 12,11, and 7 years old and they played for ages.

You could also do it with envelopes, instead of pages inside...

[GinaLin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sharron246

Mini Photo Book Tutorials at Splitcoaststampers

I've just made this with my children.

I've enlarged the design, just remember to work out half way on the design then take 1/4" off that, measurement.

12 By 12 paper cardstock is score at 5 3/4 by 6 1/2.
then I still Scored the 2" and 2 1/4"

At the bottom.

Inside cards were 5 1/2" by 9"
We had 8 pages and used a brad to hold to the front of the book and didn't add any back pages.

Follow all other instructions.
I did add my folded over tab at the top and on some and it looked great.

We added tabs, flowers, stickers and loads more to the card my lot were 12,11, and 7 years old and they played for ages.

You could also do it with envelopes, instead of pages inside...

Those are really cute too. There is only one 7 year old in the group, the other girls are a little older. Glad to know you made it with a child that age.

[Ruth Schow]

I've done a mini scrapbook/matchbook style for a bunch of 10 yr. olds. It was just stapled together. They loved it! There was only about 5 blank pages in the inside and they stamped their name and embelished the outside. Kids love stuff with their name on it!

[alliwhit]

I have just been asked to do a group like this. Thanks for all of the great ideas!

[dasimonds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GinaLin

I am hoping some of the wonderful people here can help me with planning some activities. We have a craft night at church and have been crafting together on a monthly basis for a little over a year. I love the fact that our group ranges in age from about 7-85. Last month we decided to start planning some activities to appeal to the younger girls (ages 7-11). For February the girls all needed decorated boxes to take for their Valentine parties so that was our activity. I have tons of experience with little kids but not as much with this age group. I would love to have any suggestions you might have of things that girls in this age group might enjoy. All the girls have moms that are stampers and scrappers so they are familiar with using a lot of the basic tools.

Thanks in advance for your time!

Here's a good craft site that might give you some new ideas...
http://crafts.kaboose.com/index.html...oglekidsdomain

[GinaLin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasimonds

Here's a good craft site that might give you some new ideas...
http://crafts.kaboose.com/index.html...oglekidsdomain

Thanks for the link. There are a lot of great ideas there.

[dasimonds]

You are very welcome!
Here is another great one....

http://familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts/

[kyloescards]

clear contact paper and sharpies they can make stickers for there lockers or use them as window clings. They probably work with stazon or other ink and stamps I just have not tried them yet.
Poly clay is fairly inexpensive if you get it on sale and they don't need a lot to make jewelry or small pieces to go on cards.
Flour and salt clay - they kids love to make sculptures - bring along a roll of aluminum foil to put in the middle if they want something large or they won't dry very well.
Also aluminum foil makes cool sculptures with a pipe cleaner or two to add support.
Mirror image pictures - give them two colors or black and white paper one piece half the size of the bottom sheet and they put the pieces they cut out on the opposite side like a mirror.
Clothes pins - the kind with the wire and two wooden parts, they can use strips of paper to decorate each side then add buttons or whatever else to decorate and they turn out very cute. I used one today to hold the card to the gift bag at a birthday party.
Mosaics - we did Christmas tree outlines - add clear contact paper and small bits of various colors of tissue paper and they are very cool - stained glass look. Also paper in small pieces and they can make any kind of picture. The kids made masaic dogs the other day.

We have Art Adventure in our school and each month we go in and have the kids make something - they are amazingly creative and can do more than we would ever expect that they are able to do!
We also have been in a ton of schools and done cards for a cause as a service learning project - the kids rock! Thumbprint creatures, small watercolor paintings, stamps, stickers most any card they can make.

[GinaLin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kyloescards

We have Art Adventure in our school and each month we go in and have the kids make something - they are amazingly creative and can do more than we would ever expect that they are able to do!
We also have been in a ton of schools and done cards for a cause as a service learning project - the kids rock! Thumbprint creatures, small watercolor paintings, stamps, stickers most any card they can make.

Thanks for all the great ideas. It is amazing how creative children can be. I craft with my nieces on a regular basis and am amazed at what they come up with. I have taught them several stamping techniques and can turn them loose in my craft room with no worries.