Different Craft and Activity Ideas for My 19 Month Old

You can make many things with these items...
Egg cartons... Cut in half to make a caterpillar
oatmeal boxes....drums,planters
toilet parer rolls... Binoculars
paper towl rolls...mobils
paper plates... Hats.. Tamborines
you can also go to the library to find craft books for children....kids have wild imaginations,, so many things in the home are useable... Q'tips..cotton balls...newspapers.. Boxes... Rocks.. Buy eyes, and make a pet rock.. I can go on and on. My grand children love to come for crafts. Keeps them away from the tv!!!!its fun to drees up befor you start like a king ,princess, elvis.. Spiderman, superman etc... Just take a towel and let him pretend to be some one he chooses .. Have fun B.

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S., if you Google "preschool materials" on the internet, you will find several websites that offer free materials and ideas for ages 1 and up. Each week has a different learning theme with corresponding activities; i.e. learn about dinosaurs this week. For dinosaur week, you could print out a picture of a dinosaur to color, print out pages to assemble a dinosaur book, etc. You can eventually move to teaching shapes, letters, numbers, with weekly themes and daily activities. I have started this with my son, who wants to do homework like his older brother.

Or, you could splurge and go to a craft store. You're sure to get a lot of good ideas and inspiration there!

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Hi S.,
Check out Familyfun.com. They have lots of cool stuff for all types of age groups. They also have pages you can pring off for just coloring and you can always get things that change with holidays and season. It's a great website/Magazine. I have 2 19 month old twins that are into trying to do things, and I get some ideas off there for them and my older children as well. Good Luck!

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Try http://familyfun.go.com/
That's helped me a ton with Crafts, Foods, Snacks. Meals, Parties, Costumes, vacations, all sorts of stuff.
Have fun.

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I do daycare in my home and was having the same trouble. I found an awesome website with wonderful ideas. it is DLTK-kids.com. give it a try. I love it

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S.- Hope this helps:
1. color on sandpaper
2. pudding painting
3. edible playdough
4. cookie dough art
5. glue stuff onto anything!
6. finger paint (add few drops of liquid soap for easy clean up)
7. contact paper art
8. paint with condensed milk and food coloring
9. paint with kool-aid (smells great!)
10. handprint art (see how many things you can create with your handprint)

Have fun! H.

Hi--I bought a series of booklets a few years back that might be helpful. They are: Look What You Can Make with Tubes (like paper towel and toilet paper tubes); Look What You Can Make with Boxes; Look What You Can Make with Paper Bags; and Look What You Can Make with Paper Plates. There are about 90 projects per book, running the range from quite simple to a bit more complex...which means that they'll last longer, right? :) They were about $6 each. I hope you get lots of ideas from others!
A.

Eeeww! I have LOTS!

First off, there is a paintbrush that you can buy at places like imaginarium that is just for tiny kids... with a big bulb handle.

Strip him down to his dipes, paper the floor, and give him paints to smear! Also, you can use cookie cutters, forks, spoons, and sponges to paint with.

Playdough is cheap, easy to make, and extremely non toxic.

Tear sheets of paper up, and cut pieces out of magazines, and give him a glue stick to just stick things together.

Ikea has cheap washable markers, papers, and paints - (the crayons are bad though...._ having a good selection of crayons, markers, and pencils is important, as well as as much paper as you can store... all easily accessible.

Finally, one of my all time favorites: Pudding (chocolate looks disgusting, but its fun - or any other color you like) and finger painting paper.

With kids and crafts, the really important thing is to introduce them to the mediums.... coloring in the lines is really not that important now.

I put a paintbrush into my boys hand as soon as he could sit up, and I am pretty much convinced that it helped him learn reading and writing much more quickly than his peers (fine motor development!)

Also - go to your local Ikea, but a whole bunch of the 1 and 3 dollar frames - and keep a moving art galleriy going! Another thing we do is that we have strung a border of art wire on my walls in 3 columns, and we use little tiny paper clips to hand up his new work!

S., there are great advises other moms have for you.
I also believe to have lego blocks on the carpet would be great!
They make them in different sizes, so choose the right size, and build houses, cars, tractors, whatever else will come to mind :)
Happy playing!
You are a great mom, I need to say!!!

Hi, S.! My daughter LOVES to do crafts...she's been doing them since she was 18 mos. old (she's two 1/2 now). I bought her a bunch of non-toxic (Crayola) finger paints, WASHABLE crayons, coloring books, Playdoh, etc. She LOVES to paint...it gets messy, though-just lay down a bunch of newspapers on your kitchen floor/table and let him go at it! We've framed her "artwork" in the past and hung some on our walls, also make great gifts for Grpa and Grma. This past year, we bought foam Christmas craft ornaments and she painted them. We hung them on the tree and made a paper chain w/ construction paper. Our tree was pretty, and she was SO proud! Another tip: for painting, I always just squirt a little bit of each color of paint onto a plastic plate (the kind in the paper plate section of the store). She reuses the same plate over and over, it's washable, reusable, sturdy, and the paint won't leak through like on a paper plate. You could also try the plates w/ sections for keeping the colors separate. Thanks for posting this question, I'm always looking for new ideas!

Hi you could check out a book called 365 games toddlers play or First Art for toddlers and twos to see if those help. J.

This really isn't crafty, but I always like to do fun activities with my kids. When my kids were very young, I would have them finger paint with pudding or colored cool whip. Then, if they eat it, it's fine, and it also dries like paint.

I have a 19 month old too and he has recently shown an interest in shapes. So, I cut out some shapes from different colored paper and let him pick them up. Everytime he picks one up I ask "Which did you choose?" He doesn't really answer yet so I do it for him. ("The yellow circle!") Then he repeats me and he loves the attention. I also glue them onto white paper for him to make a picture and he is so proud. I also have a 3yr old girl and a 4 week old son, so I know how important it is for equal time and keeping them busy.

Good Luck,
A fellow SAHM of 3

I am very fond of the foam board that you can stick foam pieces to. These pieces have adhesive on them and a bit like stickers. You can pick them up at Jo Ann crafts and Wal-Mart. My daughter loves this and can play for hours with it. Also, we do "puffy paint." It is equal part water, salt, and flour. You color it with food coloring. We give her either cheap paint brishes or a popsicle stick to use and paper...Baby Picasso. When you let it dray, it "puffs up."

There are a lot of websites geared to help with this problem. I like the huggies site.
www.huggieshappybaby.com/tools/ap.aspx
You can specify age and who the activity will be with and if it is outside or inside. I have found a lot of great ideas here.
Good luck.

I personally think doing crafts with a child at that age is very difficult. My son in now 6 and loves to draw, color, make things and do just about anything having to do with art. And I think its because at that age I would give him a piece of paper and crayons (make sure to watch him so he doesn't eat the crayons)and let him go at it. He would scribble to his hearts content. I didn't start doing crafts with him until he was in preschool (3 years old). I also like the idea of giving him the freedom to create what he wants. I think sometimes crafts can take away from children's own creativity. I hope this was helpful and color, color, color!

One thing my daughter loves is pudding painting (finger painting with pudding). I just use vanilla and put a drop of food coloring in each one. Then I get out some paper, put her in play clothes, and let her go nuts. It's really fun and the clean up isn't bad since she's at the table. She also loves playdoh but she's a few months older than your son. She mostly watched me play with it for a bit. She likes coloring and loves stickers. Hope these help!

Yes, definetly the pudding paint and you can also use ketchup, mustard, etc. Fill a container with dry rice and hide a few small objects in there, then he can find them-great for dexterity!

My mom gave me a great book when my oldest was about that age. I'm pretty sure it's called the "Toddler Busy Book". There's also more in the series, including "Preschooler Busy Book", etc. It has over 300 activities and ideas in it (if I remember correctly).
I pull it out every now and then for some fresh ideas. I also give two thumbs up to Family Fun. Great magazine, great website.
(Found a link so you can see the book):
http://store.smarttot.com/busybook.html

I also love www.familyfun.com and www.childfun.com. Child fun had oodles of ideas and I used it when teaching pre-school years ago. Good luck, have fun and get messy!

Hi S.,
It sounds like you already have some good ideas one more is shaving cream you can add a little bit of food coloring stir it up and let him have fun.
Another idea is a mom n me art class at Gymboree I'm not sure if your city has it or not. I did that with my son and that was a blast we did that for a year.another idea is called moon sand. Hope it helps. Deb Winslow