We haven’t been doing as many actual projects these days, but we still try to do arts and crafts several times a week. We’ve been keeping it simple with some favorite stand-bys:

Painting with Glue
Always one of our favorites, the girls love to paint glue onto a piece of paper and stick whatever random embellishments I put out to the paper. I’m always amazed at just how long this holds their attention!

Coloring with Chalk on Construction Paper
This is a fun variation of coloring. The chalk shows up really great on darker colored construction paper, and the feel of the chalk on the paper is much different (smoother, maybe?) than crayons or pencils.

Doodle Pads
I don’t know if these technically count as a craft, but the girls absolutely love their doodle pads. I do a couple things to put a new spin on them. Our Dora doodle pads came with stencils for drawing Dora and Boots. You can also get rubbing plates from Oriental Trading Company (which I’m really excited about as well) that can double as stencils for the magnetic doodle pads as well. Also, if you have magnets on your refrigerator or just lying around, using magnets in different sizes and shapes is always fun.

Stencils or Rulers
Monkey Doodle (2yo) isn’t quite ready for this (although she tries!), but Pumpkin Doodle (almost-4) is just starting to get the hang of tracing. We have a set of Montessori metal insets in simple shapes, or I just give her a ruler and a pencil and leave her to it. It’s great for developing fine motor skills as well as learning to control a pencil.

Cutting Play-Doh
Neither of my girls is very good at cutting with scissors yet (maybe because I banned all scissor usage after a string of hair-cutting experiments on Pumpkin Doodle’s part), but Play-Doh is a fun way to practice cutting.

What about you? What do you do when you don’t have the time or energy to do an actual “project” craft but want to get some crafting in with the kids?