Arts and crafts with a 17month old?

[KnickersOnMaHead]

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Mine are a little older, but we started off with:

Playing with playdoh-making stuff, adding glitter, pushing macaroni into it etc...! (I have a good recipe if you are interested!)

Sponge painting/ hand painting (i covered the whole table in lining paper-more chance of getting paint onto paper!) Also painting with brushes, cars, potatoes etc! (Also can be done on fabric for a nice keep sake!

Sticking anything onto paper (quality street wrappers, feathers, etc) with homemade glue!! I used to get quite a lot of stuff from the early learning centre, but now i mostly pick stuff up now and again and keep in a box as i am going along!

Hope this helps, i will re post if i think of anything else!

my dd's favourites are:

playdough with a rolling pin and cutters

paper - use felt tips or paint

glue stick and glitter shaker

ELC have a lovely range of art and craft bits. Tesco have a good selection too. Don't be too adventurous... your dd will let you know what she enjoys .

My 18 mo was most unimpressed with play doh, and only marginally impressed by the dog and cat that I made her out of it!

Those of you who do arts and crafts with toddlers, can I just ask, do you live in rented accomodation? Because I do and therefore have a fear of doing messy stuff with DD.

Yes, rented-but with laminate floor! I dont use anything that stains though!

I have just moved from rented accommodation. I think that you need to have "rules" with your littlies about these sorts of activities. For example, my dd knows that she has to use her "messy mat" (big plastic sheet thingy we bought at tesco). Tbh, I usually save painting for her playgroup but I would love to have an apron (for her) and the patience (for me) to do this at home without fear.

My favourite craft activity for mine at this stage is sticky back plastic pinned to the table sticky side up with an assortment of 'things' feathers, matchsticks, pom poms,sequins etc and letting them stick the bits on the sheet, I still have the older kids pictures now, no glue, no mess, great fun. We buy our 'bits' from the local playgroup shop (which is not widely advertised but is adjoined to a local nursery) they used to be the PPA but may have changed names, I only know about them because when we were kids my Mum was the chairperson for the local group and found our local shop for us, they're very good value though. Ask around at nursery and pre schools. Failing that, the NES Arnold catalogue is fab, but is in bulk and can work out quite expensive.

We do the sticking stuff on paper with glue too.
We do cuttting / tearing as well - use old catalogues/magazines and DD can choose what to stick.

3Ddonut - We'd love to expand to things like feathers, pom poms, etc. but am thinking about the expense. Very you have a local playgroup shop

feelinglucky - I got some packets of feathers at hobbycraft (for something else!!) for around a pound? They had a huge selection from quality feathers to stuff suitable for 'junk' play.

Never found a purple paint that didn't stain a little bit (it comes out of tables etc. with sunshine and wear after a while though). And those ELC Magic Painters stained too, but everything else has come out of whatever DS has got it on without too much difficulty.

DS's first craft was sticking pasta shapes onto paper, then we did painting. If you tape the paper down to the table before painting starts, I find it cuts down on mess hugely.

Oh and google for your local "Scrapstore" you can get loads of junk - fabric offcuts for sticking, scrap paper galore, old wool offcuts, strange and random things of all description - for next to nothing. And ours does discounted art materials too.

I mostly like to use ready mixed water based paint - you can get a four pack of squirty bottles in Tesco, plus ELC does lots of differnt ones to (expensive way to go that).

Last tip would be get lots of brushes and encourage her to change brushes for different colours. Never ever allow a water jar on the table to rinse brushes in. Nightmare.