Truth be told, there are TONS of craft we can do with our bubs. My baby and I started going to a play learn language class when she was about 10+ months old. I was already spending about 45 - 60mins a night play learning with her on weekdays and I wanted her to be exposed to more things. For me, I wanted to see how the teachers teach and the various activities they do so that I can learn too and hopefully be able to engage my bub better.
I was actually very impressed with the craft work on my trial lesson. Before the craft segment, our kids were given an egg rattler to play with which encourages their motor skills development as they learnt to shake the rattlers. Then, for craft time, a piece of paper was placed in a transparent square box and marbles dipped into primary coloured paints (done by parents of course due to choking hazard) were then placed into the box, on the paper. When the lid was closed, our kids were encouraged to shake the box and hence, creating their masterpiece as the marbles rolled around and the colours streaked across the paper. The kids loved the sound and of course, being able to see the creation of the colour streaks. And the masterpiece can be used as a placement on our kid's high chair tray.
Encouraged by the fun time we had, I started to research and prepare for our own craft time which I'd incorporate into my evening time with my girl twice to thrice a week. I usually try to work with and around a theme for a week. For this week, the object / word is 'Bird'. Hence, I wanted for the craft item to tie back to the focus of the week so that she gets to learn about the item through various senses - visual (through books), audio (when I read out to her), kinesthetic (encouraging her to sign as well as to spread her arms out and fly like a bird) and tactile (from the craft work!) I found that there are actually many useful websites for craft which offers free colouring sheets, craft ideas and even show samples of work which helpful mummies send in. The Crayola website has really good and very simple ideas which can be easily implemented / improvised to our baby's ability. My other favourite site is this as the amount of ideas and resources is tremendous and you can even select the category you like. This is especially useful for me due to my weekly themed sessions. And before you say how hard it is, here's two pieces of work to share (peacock was done at home while the penguin was done in class):
Of course, all these craft need parental guidance. I would for e.g. print and cut out the template in advance for the peacock. But the colour selection, finger printing, painting and the final pasting was done my my girl. A tip to share when we are doing the craft work is that we should talk to our babies and name the parts, colours, etc.
A personal experience is that the tummy on the penguin is made of cotton wool and from the tactile play and the repetition of the word "tummy" when I press my girl's hands to rub on it, she now remembers the word. To end off this post, I found a good blogsite that sells some crayola items at a good price - the finger gel paints are only at $9.90 where I got it about 20+% more at a shop in Raffles Place. I have also compared the pricing for the large crayons and the glitter glue and both were much cheaper on this site too. ENJOY!
