How to stock your kid's craft supply kit

In real life, Whitney is the crafty one and I’m the other one. About a year ago, I asked her what should be included in a basic arts and crafts kit. Armed with these supplies, I would have a few more tricks up my sleeve on rainy days. At that time, my sleeve was full of board games and play-doh.

She told me to get these 10 craft supplies:

Kid scissors
Colored cardstock – pack of multicolored stiff paper available at Target or any craft store
Hole puncher for connecting things
Water colors for least painful painting experience
Tape – Scotch tape for crafts, blue tape for forts, duct tape to ruin your furniture
Pipe cleaners
Stickers or labels intended for office things – ie not licensed characters or holidays – for more open ended usage
Beading kit – buy packages of manly colors or rainbow colors – do it now before little man becomes a hazard to all types of tiny object activities
Kid catalogs and magazines they can cut pictures out of
Wrapping paper

Whitney took pity on my fragile sleep-deprived mind and offered…
10 activities to DO with all these goodies:

Make an alphabet or color book for the baby. Milo draws pictures, Holden writes the words. one word per page, ie banana, dog, car.
Cut out and tape or glue eyes nose mouth from magazine faces (need entertainment or fashion mags) to make a new face.
Make and send a card to cousins
Print a picture of self in black and white and then watercolor it
Make a paper chain to countdown days til x (holiday, birthday, grandparent visit!)
Draw with crayons and water color on top
Make jewelry out of pipecleaners
String beads on pipecleaners
Make a tic tac toe game to play
Decorate a cardboard box

I loved Whitney’s suggestions because they sounded simple enough. Because I was stretched thin with a newborn, my quick run to Michael’s craft store was delayed for a bit (and blogging was pushed off for a year!). I reluctantly admit that the big shop finally happened because we were testing out TaskRabbit so I sent one of the rabbits out with my shopping list. Score! I purchased the items and stored them within my older sons’ reach.

Milo needed no further instruction to make the most of the new materials. This past weekend, he cut out foam masks (from the leftovers of my R2D2 baby mobile), made a frog puppet named Holden, and used up the tape (again!) making superhero wrist cuffs.

I love that he has the imagination to power his projects and the craft balls (sorry, that sounded wrong!) to turn into aliens and flowers.

I don’t love the little bits of shrapnel I find every time I walk near his work table, but it seems like a fair price for all the fun he’s having.

What’s in your craft supply kit?

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RookieMom Heather

RookieMoms co-founder & mom to 3 boys in Berkeley, CA. Bossy big sister and project manager turned blogger. Find me on my other site on 510families.com or hiding in my minivan eating dark chocolate.

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