Craft for Helping Kids Wind Down
Hey Mama! Are you looking for a break?
Are you at home with your kiddos and desperately searching for any and every activity to just keep your kids occupied?
Are your kids running around like wild beasts?… I mean, are your kiddos a little more rambunctious these days from being cooped up?
If so, keep reading! I have a super simple, fun, and most importantly CALMING craft idea for your littles.
Using Crafts for Calming
I don’t know about you, but when my kids have too much unstructured time, things can get a little out of hand.
Crafts are the perfect break in the day to switch things up and get kiddos to use the artistic part of their brain while developing important fine motor skills.
Calming Kids’ Craft
In this craft your child will be making a sunset cityscape.
They will be mixing paint colors (Does it get any more zen?), painting, gluing and patterning in this activity.
So much learning in one simple craft!
Step 1
Cut out black rectangles and squares. These will be the buildings in the cityscape. If your kiddo can cut these out, even better!
Step 2
Cut out small yellow circles, triangles and squares. These will be the windows on the buildings.
Step 3
Squirt red and blue paint on your paint tray. If you want to, add some white too. Encourage your child to mix the colors to make purple.
They can experiment making different shades of purple by using different ratios of the colors.
Step 4
Have your child cover the entire page with their different shades of purple.
Step 5
Let the paint dry.
This is a great time to sit down are read some books about paint mixing or colors.
Step 6
Once the paint is dry, have your kiddo glue the black rectangles onto the paper. Make sure they are glued to the very bottom of the page so that you don’t end up with floating buildings (unless they are creating their own little Venice)!
Step 7
Glue the yellow circles, triangles and squares onto the buildings as windows.
This is where you can encourage your kiddo to make patterns with their shapes!
Step 8
Hang up your kiddo’s art work and enjoy the calm!
Turn the Calming Kid’s Craft Into a Week-Long Unit!
If this craft spiked your interest and you want to do a whole unit on colors with your kiddo, you are in luck!
I would like to give you a glimpse into our week and the extra activities that go perfectly with the craft above.
I have shared before that I use BFIAR in for preschool homeschool. And I review FIAR for kindergarten homeschooling as well.
FIAR is a curriculum that is literature and play based, and makes learning a ton of fun.
This unit is inspired by one of the FIAR lessons, where the concept is that you read a book five days in a row and do activities that go along with the book.
Check out our homeschool kindergarten curriculum if you are interested to know what we are using along-side FIAR.
Go-Along Activities
Books
The book that we read each day of the week is Harold and the Purple Crayon.
Here is the Amazon synopsis of the book:
“One evening Harold decides to go for a walk in the moonlight. Armed only with an oversize purple crayon, young Harold draws himself a landscape full of wonder and excitement. Harold and his trusty crayon travel through woods and across seas and past dragons before returning to bed, safe and sound. Full of funny twists and surprises, this charming story shows just how far your imagination can take you.”
We really had a lot of fun reading the book over and over. We discussed “setting” as we read, since Harold keeps on changing the setting of the story.
If you don’t have access to a library right now and don’t want to make a book purchase, here is a reading of the book for you!
We also read many books about colors, mixing colors, and learned colors in Spanish. I included books about transportation also, since Harold uses various modes of transportation in the story.
If you are looking for easy access to lots of great books, check out vooks.com. Vooks is an online animated library that really keep the kiddo engaged and encourages reading.
They even offer a 30 day FREE trial, so there is no reason to not sign up just to check it out (and have a month worth of entertainment for your kid)!
Transportation Sort
Since we were reading go-along books about cars, planes, trucks, trains etc., we brainstormed the different kinds of transportation that they are familiar with and then did a sort to split them up by air, land, and water. Totschooling has a fun, free printable sort.
Sensory Bin
Those of you who know me, know that I LOVE sensory bins. So of course we would include one in our week!
Y’all, purple kinetic sand is the PERFECT sensory bin for this unit! Just throw in some “things that go” and maybe some cups, and watch your kiddo stay occupied for hours. I am not kidding.
Journaling
Journaling is the perfect practice for handwriting, breaking words up into sounds, spelling and sight words.
I use this handwriting without tears journal for my kindergartner, but really any writing paper will work.
Here are a couple writing prompt ideas for this unit:
What is your favorite place to be?
What is your favorite kind of transportation?
How can you make purple paint if you only have other colors?
What city would you like to visit?
R wrote that her favorite place to visit is Chicago, since her Nana and Papa live there.
Story Drawing
This is a fun activity to do at the end of the week, after you have read Harold and the Purple Crayon a couple times.
Hang up some easel paper on the longest wall of your house. Seriously, make the paper longer than you think you’ll need.
It might be tempting to just lay the paper on the floor, but it really is best to hang it up. There are many great benefits to drawing on a vertical surface. The authors at The Inspired Treehouse have a great article about that.
Read the story and have your child draw the same things that Harold in the story is drawing.
So fun to see their growing minds recreate the story from their imagination!
Calming Kids’ Craft and More
I hope your week is filled with lots of fun learning and calm!
You got this, Mama!
What are some of your favorite activities or crafts to help your kiddos wind down?
