Crafts for One Year Old

[Dot.mom]

Hi

DD is 15 months and loves to do painting/coloring types of projects. I am looking for cute ideas she can do as gifts for relatives. She has done a lot of finger and brush paintings, made pencil cups (I put masking tape over a jar and she put paint hand prints all over it), etc. I'm not as much into the hand print art (ie hand prints doctored to look like turkeys, etc) at this age b/c she enjoys participating more and that really ends up being me making the turkey parts as her art is not representational yet. I'm looking for more things like the pencil cups.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[Linda in Arizona]

I found some cups at Michaels that a child can easily decorate. They have a piece of paper between the inside of the cup and the clear outside of the cup. You just take the paper out, they let child to paint, then put it back in when it is dry. These are great gifts for grandma!

[bluemoon]

how about salt dough. I don't know the exact ratio off hand but it is basically flour salt and water. we made fun little ornaments this holiday. my dd is almost 20 months. we did a hand print one, and she liked rolling it around. Granted I think adults had more fun... she loved to just mash balls of the dough. But you bake it then paint it. and it keeps forever. My mom still has ones we made when I was little.
okay I got out the book with the recipe:
4 cups flour
1 cup table salt
1 1/2 cups water
First mix flour and salt together. stir in water half a cup at a time. mixing until dough turns into unbeatable lumps. This take muscle!knead dough on flat surface for 10minutes.
there is more buts thats the jist of it add more water if too dry.......bake at 250 until rock hard. do not make too thick or won't dry.never more than one inch thick.
I got this from the book Circle round by starhawk..
and always have fun!!!

[Queen Gwen]

We used the dough idea for Xmas ornaments one year (there are about a zillion recipes on the Internet, in books at the library, etc.). We made balls of dough, then used a cookie stamp to press them out into sorta flat shapes. Poked holes for a hanger, baked, painted with tempera and glitter glue.

Speaking of glitter glue, another ornament we did was putting glue on craft sticks, dumping glitter on (very popular activity), adult hotglues 3 craft sticks into star shape, add string for hanger.

Dd fingerpainted in red, pink, etc: I cut heart shapes out of the paper. We glued to cards, added stickers, etc., for Valentines Day.

Bookmarks. Seems like you should be able to do something with picture frames, too.

Handprints can also go on t-shirts, aprons, sweatshirts, placemats, oven hotpads, Christmas Tree skirts (if it's something washable use fabric paint, otherwise tempera's o.k.) and into wet cement (we did a stepping stone for Grandpa's garden last year with various footprints and colorful stones -- this project needs at least one adult for every child!LOL)

The most important thing is to remember that it's process and not product at this age. Also, don't try to make too many of any particular thing, as it can get boring.