Crafts for Kids - Love Them or Hate Them?

I'd like to start this post with a confession - I hate play dough. I hate it with a passion.


I bought some for Monkey when he was younger stupidly thinking that we would sit together around the table making intricate little sculptures with it, perhaps cute little animals, or rolling it into long strands that would be shaped into letters of the alphabet.


Here is the sort of thing I thought I'd be making with Monkey
Source: Wikimedia Commons

WRONG

What Monkey does with play dough is roll it out in to flat circles and pretend they are puddles of mud and then drives his toy cars through it and gets them stuck. He also gets me to shape play dough into pretend cars and then crashes them together. His other trick is to use the play dough shape tool he has to create long pieces of play dough like spaghetti and trail them across the table.

These activities result in three things

1. The wheels of his toy cars get play dough stuck in them which I have to spend hours trying to get out.
2. All the different play dough colours get mashed together and turn into one yukky yellowy brown-black sludge colour.
3. Little bits of play dough get distributed throughout my house, mainly finding their way onto the carpet to get stuck on socks at a later date.

And so developed my dislike of play dough. I don't hate other crafts as much as play dough, but I will admit I'm not one of those great moms who has a drawer full of bits and pieces just waiting for the next craft session. It is still possible to find crafts to do though, and I particularly like these ideas because they are easy and don't create much mess!

Are you a crafty mom? Share your ideas for crafts - preferably ones that aren't too messy and don't require a drawer full of pom-poms to get started.