Kid Crafts Magazine - AKA: Free Little Kid Crafts

As promised, we've moved over to the new server and assumed our new name. If you subscribed under our old name, I hope you'll stick with us and that you enjoy the new format.

~~ Chris

Kid Crafts Magazine is the only digitally delivered magazine dedicated to children's crafting. We strive to bring you the best craft projects for younger children from throughout the Internet. This newsletter can be viewed online. Read previous issues of our newsletters located in our Newsletter Archive.

This Issue's Sponsor

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Featured & New Crafts

When the weather's beautiful, it seems much more difficult to keep the kids it their seats long enough to do any crafting. Crafts that work out of a scrap or bit box work well during the summer months. After several suggests for bit box crafts, I decided to create a Scrap Box Theme page at Free Kid Crafts. Below are a couple of the ideas that I've managed to get up from the new bit box theme. In addition, there are a few other new crafts to keep the little ones busy.

• Totem Pole - Give children a kitchen roll middle and a pot of glue and bits of paper to stick onto kitchen roll - one colourful totem pole - very popular with the children because it can stand up afterwards and they can "display" it. ~ Submitted by Jeanette

• Mock Mosaic Flower - Draw a simple flower outline on a piece of construction paper for the child. Glue pieces of colored paper, yarn, feathers, buttons, or whatever you have on hand inside the outline of the flower to make it three dimensional.

• Flower Garden - Draw an outline of a few flowers, trees, etc. on a piece of construction paper and let the children complete a simple flower garden using supplies from your scrap box. When done, the pictures almost look like mosaics. Older children can simply draw the stems of their flowers and fill in the rest. Younger children will need a bit more guidance to get started.

• Dora's Circus Maze - My three year old was too young to do this maze, but he enjoyed coloring it anyway (He loves Dora the Explorer). My five year old, on the other hand, whizzed right through it and asked for more. This one comes from Nick Jr.

• Bubble Pictures - This is a great craft idea for the summer. We tack up some pieces of construction paper on a fence at the children's face height. Then we mix a little bit of food coloring in some bubble solution. We usually mix up a couple of bottles in different colors. Then we have the kids blow bubbles onto the paper. They have a ball doing this, but make sure they are wearing old clothes or swimsuits so they won't get food coloring on good clothes -- it could stain.

• Game of CHUKKA - This is a craft and game that a site visitor sent in that uses milk jugs. Basically, you cut the milk jugs to create a kind of scoop that you can use to toss a ball back and forth. There are complete directions on how to make the "scoops" and decorate them, as well as a picture of the finished product at Kids Domain.

• Saw Dust Picture - You can use the material they put in pet cages (like hamster bedding material) for this project. Make sure it is clean and free of splinters, etc. Then all you have to do is let the children to glue the loose curls of wood onto construction paper to create their own "textured" picture.

• Travel Bingo Cards - With so many people taking their kids on roadtrips over the summer, you may find these printable travel bingo cards useful to help keep the kids busy in the car. You can laminate them and glue velcro on the back, or print them out on magnet sheets so that kids can play with them in their carseats without dropping them. (So you can cut down on the "Mommy I dropped it, will you get it for me" factor.)

• Custom Greeting Cards - Create custom greeting cards for your child that you can print out on your computer. Themes include Disney, Dora the Explorer, Blue's clues, Sesame Street, Dinosaurs, and more.

• Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly Booklet - We recently purchase the book The Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly and my 3 year old son absolutely loves it. I initially bought it because I remembered the song from when I was little and I thought it was cute. So when I read it to him the first time, I actually sang it. Before I knew it, he was singing it all the time and sitting down with the book to "read" it to himself. When I printed off this little booklet for him, he sang the song as he colored each page and we put it together. Although the booklet doesn't have great pictures, he really enjoyed making it.