Keeping preschoolers busy with crafts

Last September I blogged about keeping toddlers and preschoolers busy while homeschooling. Since I haven't blogged about that in a while I thought I'd share something I recently made for Mason, a craft box. It sounds simple enough, but there's a few steps you can take to make it easier on yourself and your preschooler. Mason loves doing crafts. But I hate having to drag everything out for him and he makes a huge mess. Last weekend I made him his very own craft box. I used a Lakeshore Medium size classroom caddy to keep all of his stuff together. You could use something similar, that's lightweight and not huge. You want your preschooler to be able to carry it. The key to a good preschool craftbox is not to put too much in it! If you give your child too many art supplies, they will make a giant mess, and inevitably won't want to clean it up :-) Mason's craft box has the following;

1. glue stick
2. roll of tape
3. 1 hole punch
4. 1 pair of blunt end scissors
5. 1 craft punch (his happens to be a Christmas tree)
6. 4 Tupperware stencils
7. 2 sheets of stickers
8. 1 sandwich bag of foam stickies
9. 1 sandwich bag of paper cut into small shapes (for gluing)
10. 5-6 pieces of colored construction paper
11. 2 pencils (one colored)
12. 4 markers
13. 4 twistable colored pencils
14. 17 crayons

Now you could throw it all in the box and hope for the best, but that's not how I roll, LOL. I like things neat, and when it's neat, it's way easier for kids to to their "work" (play of course!). I dug in our recycle bin, and found a few plastic bottles. I cut them in half, and used the bottom half to hold the supplies. We have one for crayons (a Lawry's marinade bottle), one of pencils and pens (a water bottle), and one for glue, scissors and the other tools (an Arm and Hammer bottle) The result is everything stays together, ta da! Now it's totally fine to not give your kid every color of the rainbow in markers, or crayons. They really don't need all of them, all 96 crayons from a Big Box, would certainly end up on the floor! Besides, giving them different types of crayons, markers and pencils is a little more exciting than having all of one kind. I have fat markers, and thin, twistable crayons, and regular, regular pencils, and colored all in there at once. I also have Tupperware stencils in his box, you could use any kind of stencil you have around. Mason also likes these old drafting stencils we have, with 20 different size circles on them. So get creative. I added 2 sheets of stickers, again anymore than that can get overwhelming to younger preschoolers. There are 2 small sandwich bags of things to glue. One is a bag of foam shapes. The other bag is random leftover scrapbook paper that I cut into small pieces. They are mostly triangles and squares. They are perfect for little hands, and the sandwich bag keeps them together. Last is paper. I like colored construction paper, because it is sturdy enough to hold up to his heavy handed coloring and gluing. Computer paper is too thin. He tears it by accident and gets frustrated. There you have it! A nicely organized craft box for your preschooler. And yes, this is a picture from *after* Mason has used it, he can clean it up all by himself :-)