Crafts

Children love to do crafts. These can be used in a storytime to give children a hands-on experience. I try to choose very simple crafts and incorporate them in with the reading of stories. The idea is that a story will be more easily remembered by its listeners as they get involved in creating something real that can be taken away.

The Internet is an extensive source of craft ideas for children. Many of the sites are categorized by theme and also include suggestions for books, fingerplays, rhymes, songs and other activities. There are sites which were designed for the daycare provider or classroom teacher audience, but have great ideas that can be easily and successfully used by anyone presenting a storytime. The key is that the crafts be related to a story, whether it is read or told in the library, classroom, daycare center, or home.

Here are some sites full of crafts:

The Activity Idea Place: art, songs, games, math and science for young children
Art is included in this extensive site of activities for young children. The activities are listed by theme and range from fun fish to bugs, bees and butterfly activities.

Buddy Pages Themes
This is a collection of themes for preschool learning. For each theme there are many activities including a few crafts. Since the crafts are listed within all the other activities, it requires a bit of scrolling through the page. But it does have some very good basic ideas, perfect for the designated themes.

Childfun.com: Activity Themes — free crafts for kids, preschool themes, songs, poems, fingerplays, flannelboard activities, art activities
Within many themes are various suggestions for crafts. The best approach to finding them is to browse within the themes of interest. An alternative is to use the search option available.

DLTK’s Printable Crafts for Kids
Featured are a variety of easy crafts for young children. Age ratings are given for each of the crafts. Many include templates for use in preparing materials. Many toilet paper tube crafts are included.

Early Childhood — educational preschool and kindergarten teaching activities
This site offers a wealth of what are called art activities. Most of them are for an older preschool and kindergarten audience.

Gayle’s Preschool Rainbow — Activity Central
Gayle’s Preschool Rainbow is a good source of craft ideas. These are listed by theme, along with book ideas, rhymes and other activities.

Hummingbird’s Lotsa Lesson Plans Page
Crafts, are interspersed with other theme-based activities, rhymes and book suggestions. As with other theme-based sites, the crafts are listed within all the other activities, and therefore it requires a bit of scrolling through the page to find them. Frequent updates make this an extremely useful resource.

Ideabox — Early Childhood Education and Activity Resources: Craft
Among other activities, Ideabox.com offers a complete list of crafts. Descriptions include appropriate ages and whether adult help is required.

Nuttin’ But Kids Main Page
This site was designed for childcare providers to develop lesson plans. It is included because each thematic lesson includes some crafts along with books, rhymes and songs, a few flannelboards and other activities. The lessons are extensive resources applicable to the storytime as well as the daycare.

Storytimes and Crafts!
Thebestbooksite.com site includes over 400 craft projects. The projects are listed by storytime topic. The site is extensive and well-designed, and even includes a keyword search of the topics option. The craft pages include templates for preparing materials and photographs of the finished products.

Pathfinder prepared June 23, 2000 by Terry Rabideau

Please send suggestions and comments to rabideau@advinc.com