How To Turn Your Junk Mail Into Fun Kids Craft Projects
Advertisements, magazines, outdated coupons- we all receive them, and they usually end up in the circular file. What if you could use these scrap items to create great craft projects for kids? From mosaics, to decoupage, to doll’s house paintings, your junk mail might provide hours of creative fun.
Make Your Own Mosaics
Color is the most essential component of a mosaic. Fliers and coupons are loaded with bright colors. Have your child cut these into various shapes and sizes. Scatter them on a piece of nice cardboard. As kids manipulate the resulting pieces, they can create numerous designs, from flowers to faces, and beyond. This provides a great learning opportunity. Teach your child words like “hue”, “tone”, and “value”. Help your child notice the lights and darks in objects, and manipulate the mosaic pieces to mimic them.
Once your child has created an attractive display, he or she can use a glue stick to adhere the mosaic pieces to the cardboard. Paint a black border along the edges, and you have an educational, personalized, wall decoration. Paper mosaics may also be used in the creation of decoupage projects.
Decorate With Decoupage
Beautiful flowering plants, animals, and more can be found in catalogue pages. For a quick and cheap decoupage project, have your child select and cut out their favorite images. Carefully coat the back of glass plates, which are readily found at yard sales, with Mod Podge, taking care to protect the face of the plate. Now your little ones can press their chosen images face down onto the back of the plate to create their own custom design! A second coat of Mod Podge seals the completed project, which remains food safe, as the front of the plate has not been altered.
Decoupage is a great way for kids to create many other custom items as well, such as trays, frames, boxes, and personalized gifts. For these, don’t be afraid to mix media! Glue bottle caps, beads, friendship bracelets, pinecones, buttons and more to your finished decoupage products to add even more interest and texture.
Learn About Fine Art
Many catalogues and magazines feature reproductions of famous works of art. Cutting out and compiling these images is a quick and easy way to create art identification flash cards. Simply paste the images on thin pieces of cardboard you can cut from your empty dry goods cartons from the grocery store. Your child can learn to recognize the different art genres, and individual artists’ styles.
These same images then can be re-purposed as doll’s house paintings. Kids can draw frames using gold paint markers, and hang their favorite miniature artistic works on doll’s house walls with a dab of museum putty.
Kids craft projects which focus on creating a useful object out of items which on their own serve no real purpose, teach children to be resourceful. Encouraging creativity at an early age promotes self-confidence and self-reliance.
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