Fun Kid's Crafts Based on Story Books for Creative Storytelling

Looking for a fun craft to go along with your child’s favorite story? Look no further! Maggy from Red Ted Art shares some of her favorite story inspired kids crafts to get those creative juices flowing.

I love reading fairytales and nothing compliments fairytales better than Fairytale Crafts to really bring them to life. Perfect for role play and discussing the story line. The physical toy is a fantastic way to engage your budding reader and inspire them to create their own imaginative stories. We are always looking for easy kids crafts, especially if they are a good match for a favourite story of ours! Ever Free coloring

Find some of my favorite ideas in the list below!

9 STORY INSPIRED KIDS CRAFTS

1. My, what lovely dolls you have! The better to tell the story with, my dear! These TP Roll Little Red Riding Hood dolls are a great addition to this classic story and will bring story time to a whole new level.

2. I’ve seen dancing dogs, a dancing bear at the circus, and even a dancing bird but none of them compare to Dancing Giraffes. Inspired by the cute book “Giraffes Can’t Dance”, these fun-to-create marionettes will prove that, yes indeed, Giraffes CAN dance!

3. I LOVE PENGUINS! This adorable book is a treasure all on its own but the Lost & Found Penguin and Boy TP Roll that your “hatchling” can create to accompany the book are just too cute. The assembly is fast and watching your little ones act out the story as you read is something truly special.

4. “Little pig, little pig, please let me in.” “Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin!” These 3 Little Pigs TP Roll Craft are so cute and a great addition to the story. The origami houses that accompany this craft are perfect. With or without the story, this is sure to provide hours of stimulating play. Belle Coloring Pages

5. The Hairy MacClary Dog marionette is super cute! It is a lot of fun to act out the mischievous behavior of the characters of this fun and witty book. The verse and repetitious nature will have your little one asking you to read it again and again.

6. This project might be a little messy but its oh, so much fun to do. Your “little minnow” will love painting your feet and hands as well as their own. And the cool collage that accompanies Hurray for Fish is well worth the mess. A definite win.

7. This colorful and tasty treat is sure to delight and satisfy. Rainbow Cookies are a blast to make…and eat! The perfect addition to a day of story time.

8. This super simple craft is a lot of fun to create and the story that inspired the Stickman Craft is really funny. I highly recommend doing both together and watching your little one laugh and play along as you read the story out loud.

9. You cannot go wrong with Eric Carle and this Bad-Tempered Ladybird Paper Plate Craft is a match made in heaven. The story is great and the craft is a fun, engaging addition to the creative story. Win! Win! Win!

I hope I inspired you to set up some crafts for your next storytime. I look forward to seeing you over at Red Ted Art sometime soon!

Fun Kid's Craft Inspired by The Bad Tempered Ladybird Book

This week for storybook summer we’re going small and looking at the microworlds of minibeasts and bugs. Today Danya is joining us sharing a fun craft for the fabulous The Bad Tempered Ladybird by Eric Carle (The Grouchy Ladybug in the US).  So I hand over Rainy Day Mum to Danya to share this fun crafts for kids. Littlest pet shop coloring pages

Hello Rainy Day Mum readers! I was a such keen reader of last year’s fantastic Story Book Summer series, so you can imagine how thrilled I am to be participating this year! Thanks Cerys for inviting me!

Oops, but I haven’t introduced myself yet. My name is Danya. I live in Sydney, Australia with my husband and our two daughters, 5 year old ‘JJ’ and 2.5 year old ‘Bee’. We get up to all sorts of creative fun together, and I write up some of our antics on our blog Danya Banya.

We also have a slight obsession with Eric Carle books. This past year we’ve made a cute (and movable) The Very Hungry Caterpillar craft, created some The Very Hungry Caterpillar inspired paintings with loo rolls, and weaved some foil and pipe-cleaner spider webs like those in The Very Busy Spider.

And today I have a fun ladybird craft, with wings that open and close, to go along with Eric Carle’s storybook The Bad-Tempered Ladybird! Ever Free Coloring

Have you read it yet? It’s about a grumpy ladybird who has more bravado than sense, as he tries to take on larger and larger animals, ending with the largest animal of all, the blue whale. It’s a great book for introducing relative size concepts. It also makes a handy prompt for discussions about bullying and appropriate behaviour. And it’s quite amusing to think of a bad-tempered male ladybird, when these animals are usually stereotyped as being pretty, feminine and delicate.

My kids are both animal-obsessed, so they especially loved seeing all the different species of animals in this book, guessing which one would come next. We also talked a lot about what ‘bad-tempered’ means, and the importance of being kind.

We had so much fun making ladybirds of our own. And they can fly! Well, sort of. Their wings can spread out as though they are flying anyway. 🙂

TO MAKE ONE (OR THREE), YOU’LL NEED:

• paper plate
• scissors
• red and black paint
• split pin
• pipecleaner
• stickytape
• something sharp (to create small holes)
• googly eyes and glue (optional)
• small white circular stickers and black marker (optional)

HOW TO MAKE THE “FLYING” LADYBIRDS

1. Cut the paper plate in half, and paint one-half red and the other half black.
– If kids happen to cut unequal ‘halves’, then have them paint the larger ‘half’ black.
– We tried various water-based and acrylic paints. The slight waxing on the paper plates made the water-based paint look washed out. So, if you can cope with the potential clothing stains, then I’d recommend acrylics.

2. Paint black spots onto the red half of the paper plate.
– We did this with black acrylic paint while the red paint underneath was still wet, and it worked out fine.

3. Once dry, cut the red and black spotted half in half again.

4. Using the black half of the paper plate, cut an inch strip in from the edge, leaving approximately a inch square in the middle.
– This is a bit tricky to explain, so please refer to the photo below. You can round the edges of the middle square if you want to – this will end up being the ladybird’s head.

5. Poke a hole through the corner of both the red and black spotted pieces. Poke a third hole about a centimetre (or half an inch) behind the ladybird’s head.
– Adult assistance is required here. I used a sharp wooden skewer. A thumb-tack or similar would also work.

6. Push the split pin through the red and black spotty pieces, and then lastly through the hole in the black piece, splitting to fasten on the back.
– You now have wings that can open and close. Open them up to the point where it looks like the ladybird is flying, and use this to work out where to put your antennae later on.

7. Cut the inch strips into thirds lengthwise. These will be your six legs. Attach with sticky-tape.

8. Poke two holes towards the back of the ladybird’s head. Cut a pipe-cleaner into thirds. Take one of the thirds, and thread it through the two holes to make antennae.
– Make sure that the position of your antennae won’t block the ladybird’s wings from opening.

9. Glue on googly eyes.
– We used a low temperature glue gun to attach the googly eyes. You could also use white round stickers for eyes, dotting with a black marker to make pupils.
– I hadn’t factored in that my 5 year old daughter JJ had cut a rather small head for her ladybird, and then wanted to use some very large googly eyes (with eyelashes) that wouldn’t have fit on her ladybird’s head. We got around this issue by cutting a larger head out of dark construction paper and sticking this on, before attaching the googly eyes.

I was really happy with how this craft turned out. JJ (my 5 year old kindergartener) could do almost the entire craft unassisted, only needing help with creating the holes and inserting the split-pin. My toddler Bee needed a bit more help, but she could was able to do all the painting and taping, and some of the cutting. I think they both did a great job!

Cardboard Tube Craft for Kids - Gerald Giraffe

This week’s book & craft has been “brewing” for a while… We ADORE Toilet Paper Crafts for Kids.  I am not sure why haven’t done it sooner, maybe I thought Red Ted was still too young. Well, he is in terms of  crafting, but he isn’t in terms of painting, sticking, helping and of course PLAYING! So, we embraced the craft – a great one for children 5yrs+ or with a helping adult!!! Red Ted loves the resulting marionettes!!! Without a further a do… Tinker Bell coloring pages

The Story

Giraffes Can't Dance Giraffe’s Can’t Dance, by Giles Andreae. Early this week, I already reviewed “Giraffe’s Can’t Dance”. Here we have it again: I have to confess to picking this book up, because I like the “format”. Our version is a smallish board book. I also liked the rhythm and rhyme of the book and Red Ted liked the bright colours. Here we have the story of a Gerald the giraffe that is, well, a little clumsy on his feet. Each year the jungle holds a jungle dance and Gerald feels left out has he is so “rubbish”. Sadly he wanders off… however, a small cricket helps him discover his “inner self”. A lesson: we are all good at something, as long as we find the right way for us. Hurray! Happy Ending.

Today we are going to make Gerald! The materials are very simple!

TP Roll Giraffe Materials
- 2 loo rolls per Giraffe,
- 1-2 sheets of A4 in contrasting colours (red & yellow in our case),
- paints (red & yellow, I prefer acrylics as they don’t get so dry and crumble like some poster paints),
- brushes,
- scissors,
- glue and later
- chopsticks and string (not shown in photo, as only decided to add these later) ever free coloring

TP Roll Giraffe How To

1) Paint two loo rolls yellow. Red Ted decided he “wanted” red, so I decided to make 2 giraffes with him. So we painted another 2 loo rolls red. I helped him, as he was getting a little tired!

2) We then dabbed on some spots in the contrasting colour with cotton wool. I think lots  of paint gives it nice “texture”.

3) Let it dry.

4) Start on the legs.

5) I didn’t have yellow paper, so I quickly “made” some with cotton wool and watered down paint… Just means you have to wait for it to dry. I only did one side. Don’t think it matters if one side is white and the other yellow. If your children have a longer attention span, they can help with this too!

6) Cut the paper in to even strips. I made mine about 1cm wide and used a ruler to help me (marked one sheet, but cut four sheets in one go). The neater and more even you cut, the better!

7) The “tricky bit”: Take one yellow and one red strip. It is kind of like pleating the two pieces of paper. Glue down the first two bits and then alternately fold over. Once you get to the end of the paper, I glued on another strip.  So each leg and neck is made of 2 yellow strips and 2 red strips of paper. Glue top down.

8) Make 5 for each giraffe (so we made 10 – got a little boring, I admit). Whilst I folded. Red Ted did some play gluing and play folding with extra strips of paper! I also made 2 smaller sets (about 1/2cm wide) in one colour for the horns and cut out some “ears”.

9) Cut down one loo roll for head (about 2/3rds)

10) Glue legs and neck on. I used cloth pegs to keep them in place whilst drying.

11) Glue on horns, ears and draw eyes/ stick on googly eyes

I found at this point that the giraffes were finished, but no so easy to play with, as the neck kept flopping about. So I decided to make marionettes out of them – I used some take away chopsticks (but lollipop sticks will do) and garden string!

12) FINISHED!

We then revisited the story at bedtime. Red Ted was delighted! And the Gerald and Geraldine have indeed been doing LOTS of dancing!

And here, erm, we had some fun. Sorry for the lack of editing… and the poncy music! Ha!

Fun TP Roll Craft - Little Red Riding Hood

We do love a good TP Roll craft.. and today, we combine our TP Roll love with our love for Fairy Tales – creating a cute Little Red Riding Hood play set or story telling props. This craft was “designed” especially for the Kids Crafts 101 “Blog Hop” – a special series – bringing together 14 of my fabulous fellow crafters to share with you crafts for those rainy days made from “every day” craft items. I have the honour of kicking off the series with our TP Roll Craft. Combine it with some scrap fabrics and you all you need is a little imagination to create any of your favourite fairy tale characters. We show you how we made ours and challenge you to make more of your own! Cinderella coloring pages

Be sure to come back visit Meri Cherry tomorrow, for her lovely Kids Craft and revisit the 14 Kids Crafts 101 page each to find links to the next idea. Rainy Days? Snow Days? Loooong Summer Days? NO PROBLEM! We have you crafty sos covered!

Little Red Riding Hood Craft Materials:

The material list below MAY SEEM LONG… but it is all about rummaging around your craft box and looking at what you can find! Adapting  it to YOUR materials in YOUR home. I have listed what WE used… but you don’t have to use the same things!! Make this your own!!

TP Roll Little Red Riding Hood:
- Scrap fabrics – ideally a red pieces and a second piece for her dress. Red gingham would be fine for her - cape too, we used old t-shirts and PJs
- Brown wool
- Glue
- Pens
- Walnut, pipecleaner and scrap fabric

TP Roll Granny:
- Scrap fabrics for her dress
- Lace or ribbon ends (optional)
- White or grey wool + bubble wrap
- Pens
- 2 small beads, 2 toothpicks and some wool

TP Roll Big Bad Wolf 
- Black paint
- Felt scraps
- Paper
- Glue

Finally.. let’s begin!

I made the Little Red Riding Hood. Later Pip Squeak helped me make the Granny. ever free coloring

1) Here are the steps showing how to make Little Red Riding Hoods hair. This is a handy “technique” for any dolly hair!! In retrospect, I made her hair a little to thick to go under her red cape, so you may want to thin it out a little! To start with, I wrapped some brown wool around a book, to get “equal length strands”.

2) I  then cut them and tied more brown wool round them, to create “bunches”.

3) I then cut a little fridge out and glued that on. Then applied lots of glue and carefully placed the rest of the hair on top, adjusting it I went.

4) If need be trim you hair a little.

5) Then add a face. I did not do a mouth as I thought Little Red Riding Hood’s emotions change a lot throughout the story…. my kids later insisted that it looked odd and at the very end she did get a mouth!

Next up we have Little Red Riding Hood’s Clothes.

1) I cut a rectangular piece of pink polka dot fabric and glued it on – ducking the end bit into the inside of the TP Roll.. but you can trim it too. I added a Ribbon as a waistband, but later decided that I didn’t like it and removed it… in other words: play and see what works for you.

2) The best bit about the cape is that it is “no sew”. I literally secured I in place with ribbon. I used a long piece of rectangular t-shirt fabric (approx 24cm log and 8cm wide, though it could have been a little longer).

3) Fold in half. Hold the back to make the cape shape and gently put over the Little Red Riding Hood. At this point I literally just pulled and pushed into space – pinching it to make the long pointy hood. You CAN sew it shut if you want – but as you an see from my pictures, it really is just secured by a ribbon!

Finally, I thought it would be nice for our TP Roll Little Red Riding Hood to have a Walnut basket to take with her. Again, have a look around at what you have at home and see what you could make this from (ore make a little paper one?).

1) I glued the pipecleaner in place.

2) Then took a round pieces of fabric, stuffed it with left over wool, bunched it up and glued it in place. Done!

The TP Roll Granny

My daughter came home from school and ask “where is Granny”, can we make one now? And… “I think Granny should have some knitting needles”. I love how SHE went off and found some toothpicks and beads and decided to make her own dolly size knitting needles. I was astounded at her creativity aged 5. A few days later she mentioned she had seen some like these in a book.. Still, I am impressed that she remembered and decided to make them!

1) For the knitting needles- Pip Squeak chose two wooden beads in different colours (as her children’s needles are two colours) and glued them to the end of the toothpicks

2) She then went off and did some finger knitting as “pretend Granny knitting”. We glued the knitting in place and made a small ball of wool, that we also glued so it doesn’t become unravelled.

3) For Granny’s hair we used a ball of bubble wrap and wrapped that in white wool and glued it in place.

4) Pip Squeak chose some fabric for her dress, I cut out a rectangle, she added glue and wrapped it around the TP Roll.

5) I found some lace which we added and Pip Squeak drew the face, complete with classes…

Ta-da… one TP Roll Granny ready!!

Finally, we dug out our Mr Wolf, from our Mr Wolf and the 3 Little Pigs Craft a while back and our set was complete!!!

3D Craft Idea for Kids: Paper Ladybug

Love ladybugs? We surely do and to prove it we are showing you how to make a lovely 3D paper ladybug craft. You can grab our ladybug craft template to make this one or you can do it on your own. Caterpillar Coloring Pages

3D Ladybug Paper Craft for Kids to Make With Free Template

We think ladybirds are the most adorable in the bug kingdom, even more than a butterfly (although those are super pretty too). Kids love all bugs that’s for sure, but we think ladybugs still have a special place in their hearts.

These little creatures are said to bring good luck, and while we are not superstitious, we can say that seeing one at the very least brings a smile on your face. The most common, and most popular, from this bug family is the red one with it’s 7 spots and this is the one we are making today. This craft is suitable for some preschoolers, kids in kindergarten and older kids. The template we provide works out nicely if you cut a letter (or A4) paper strips across the width of it. Ever Free Coloring

Time to ger crafty! You don’t need many things in order to make this ladybug craft and as it’s a frugal one, it’s perfect for the classroom too.

What you need
- our ladybug craft template (scroll down the page to get it)
- printer
- markers, crayons or whatever coloring medium you prefer
- glue (glue stick works like a charm)
- red construction paper
- black construction paper
- scissors or paper trimmer

We prepared both video tutorial and instructions with photos for this craft. While we colored the template at the end of our tutorial, we recommend it is colored before hand, for easier coloring, especially if young kids will be making this.

Or Follow The Step by Step Instructions
Step 1: Print our template (you can get it a bit further down this page).
Step 2: Cut strips of red paper. We think 8 work out the best but it depends also on the width of the paper strips and the age of the children.
Step 3: If you are working with younger kids – preschoolers – wider strips are better and using less of them is better as it will be easier for the kids to handle.
Step 4: Fold the strips on both ends as shown on the image above.
Step 5: Apply glue on the folded part.
Step 6: Glue the strips of paper on the template, within the ladybug body (circle). Start with one strip, making an arch.
Step 7: Next one glue at a 90° angle in regards to the first one. Confusing? We recommend you watch the video we shared above these photo instructions.
Step 8: When you are happy with how the body of the ladybug is looking, start cutting circles out of black paper. You will need 7. Or more. Depending on what kind of ladybug you are making.
Step 9: Apply glue on the spots and glue them onto the ladybug.
Step 10: Glue in stick does work out nicely here.

All done! Your ladybug is looking quite nice already! Now it’s time to get to coloring, if you haven’t done that in the beginning.

Fun fact: the ladybug can have anywhere between 0 to 24 spots, the 24 being the record winner!

Spring Craft Idea for Kids: Caterpillar Pom Pom Craft

Spring is the best time of the year to do some bug crafts, if it’s to rainy to go outside. This caterpillar pom pom craft is a fun and wiggly project the kids will love to make. We’re really into bug crafts lately, even more so into caterpillar crafts and we think this one turned out pretty cool too. Spring Coloring Pages

Adorable Caterpillar Pom Pom Craft For Kids

This craft can be used as a part of the project to demonstrate the life cycle of the butterfly!

You can also make a butterfly out of paper and pom poms and another leaf with a bunch of pom poms for eggs. Chrysalis will need a bit of imagination though – but pom poms wrapped in tissue paper could work out nicely.

And there you have it a life cycle of a butterfly craft is done. This would make a fun assignment to make in the classroom or at home.

But let’s return to our little pom pom creatures on the leaf shall we? Ever Free Coloring

Pom poms are a great crafting material (good for fine motor skills too), they can be a very inexpensive material you just have to find your place to them. For example our local stores carry packages with 50 to 100 pom poms that cost the same as a pack of assorted colors with 2000 pom poms we snatched online. Worth researching various places, especially if you are a teacher and need lots of pom poms.

What you need:
- a whole lot of pom poms
- goggly eyes
- green construction paper
- white school glue
- dark green marker
- scissors

Follow These Step by Step Instructions
Step 1: Draw a leaf on the green construction paper.
Step 2: Cut the leaf shape.
Step 3: Apply white school glue. Make an S shape.
Step 4: Start placing small pom poms, following the glue line.
Step 5: Add two goggle eyes on a larger pom pom. Glue the large pom pom on the leaf.

You have finished your caterpillar pom pom craft.

Easy Preschool Crafts: Color Spray T-Shirts

This Color Spray science/art experiment was so simple that my preschoolers were able to replicate it at home easily, and so enthralling that it kept my text-addicted high school students away from their phones for a whole hour! Tessellation Coloring Pages

I am super excited, I love my preschooler – but I have a houseful of them – and this year I am taking a break from them once a week and teaching a Art through Science course with our local home-school Co-op.   All of my students are potty-trained, they all can read… and they all have phones and most have taken their PSATs.

Anyhoo, this was a science experiment I first did with them.   We attempted to replicate Kandinsky’s Circles while we watched the diffusion of color through alcohol.

SUPPLIES YOU WILL NEED:
- Clean white T-Shirt – preshrunk
- Collection of Permanent Markers
- Rubbing Alcohol
- Spray Bottle

HOW TO CREATE ART – THROUGH SCIENCE:

Step 1: Color circles and geometric shapes on your T-shirt with the permanent markers.   We tried to use contrasting colors in concentric rings, much like Kandinsky’s art of circles. We love Kandinsky! Ever Free Coloring

Step 3: After you have your T-Shirt filled with colorful circles, fill your spray bottle with Rubbing alcohol and lightly mist the entire shirt, then squirt heavily in the middle of each circle.   Watch the alcohol spread the color through the fibers of the T-shirt fabric. Fascinating.

Step 4: If you are working with preschoolers, you will want to supervise them with the rubbing alcohol spray. They will feel so “big” as they see the product of their doodles explode with color!

Step 5: We did wash our shirts afterwards and the color faded slightly, so be sure to wash it with dark colored clothes the first time or two that your art shirt is laundered.   After the colors have set they will last for awhile!

Step 6: Our shirt is still loved by my little artist and it has been several weeks since we created it together.