Back to School Crafts: A Creative Start to the Year
Make a countdown calendar together that gives a new reason every day to get excited about the start of school. Turn a run-of-the-mill backpack into a special reflection of your kid’s unique personality. Create unique pencils for every class in the day. Back to school crafts are easy on your wallet, and give you and your son or daughter the opportunity to spend some quality time together in the precious last days of summer.
A Countdown Calendar
The countdown calendar is one of the easiest back to school crafts to make, and it’s a great opportunity to let your kid’s creativity run wild. All you need is some construction paper, a stapler, and colorful crayons or markers. Take one sheet of paper for every day between now and the day that school starts, and mark the number of days left on a corner of the page. Then, it’s time to have some fun!
Decorate the pages with drawings, stories about fun things that happened in school last year, or reasons why school is cool. Try decorating a few pages yourself without letting your child see- that way, when they discover them later, it’ll be a complete surprise! A countdown calendar is one of the most special back to school crafts, because it gives your kid a daily, handmade reminder of your bond.
When, between the two of you, you’ve made all the pages unique and colorful, put them in order and staple them together across the top edge to make a simple calendar-style book. Hang it up in your child’s room, and watch their excitement build as the days fly by. This back to school craft will be past its use once school starts, but it’s a great way to get started crafting together. Now that your creative juices are flowing, let’s move on!
Backpacks: From Basic To Special
When your child is in school, there are a few things that he or she will use every single day. These staples usually consist of a notebook or binder, a lunchbox, and a backpack to keep it all in. When you and your kid turn your creative eyes towards these items, you’ll be using back to school crafts to make every day of the school year unique. Try decorating a backpack together. That way, whenever your child uses it, he or she will remember the fun you had together doing back to school crafts.
The easiest way to decorate a backpack is by drawing or painting on it. For a long-lasting look that will weather months of washing and weather, try permanent markers or puffy paints. Another fun option is to use washable Crayola fabric markers. Then your kid’s backpack can become a constantly changing canvas of self-expression. There’s no reason why back to school crafts are just for the fall, especially when your child can re-decorate the backpack to celebrate returning to school at the end of every vacation and break throughout the year.
For a more permanent design, work together with your child to do some simple felt appliquÃ?©s. Although this is one of the back to school crafts that require a fair amount of supervision, you’ll find that the results are well worth your time. Have your kid pick the placement and the colors, then do the cutting yourself and attach the pieces with some simple hand sewing. If your child is very young, simple shapes like squares, triangles, and circles might be appropriate. If your kid is a bit older, you can work together to design a pattern that reflects a favorite interest like dinosaurs or outer space. This can be a great way for your kid to stand out and announce his or her personality to the world in a colorful and fun way.
Pencils For Every Class
Decorating the ends of pencils will help your kid keep track of his or her pencils even when friends and classmates borrow them, and it makes writing a lot more fun. Decorating pencils is one of the least expensive back to school crafts, and making special pencils for every class in the day is a great way to help your child get excited about different school subjects. To decorate a pencil, start by wrapping a chenille pipe cleaner around the pencil a few times, near the eraser end. Then, cut small matching shapes out of cardboard or cardstock, and glue them around the edge of the pipe cleaner to cover the end of the wire, as though it were a sandwich with the paper as the “bread.” You can really let your kid’s creativity bloom with this one- they can decorate the cardstock or cardboard with markers or crayons, stickers, or anything else you or they can think of! For a really personal touch, cut up photographs of the family and use those in lieu of cardstock.
