Craft Project for 3 Year Old

Painted rocks
holiday decorations
coloring
pine cone bird feeders
cookies/cakes
paper bag puppets

Home made clay dough (flour, salt, water and food coloring).

Finger painting, (water based paints)

Crayons and markers and colored pencils

You will need to watch them with all of these activities.

We love to make sugar cookies and cut them into shapes and decorate them with colored sugar.

Hi –
Here are some art and craft activities that you can do - these activities also help support prewriting skills 

1. Newspaper: Give children newspaper and show them how to tear it using their thumb, index and, middle fingers. After tearing it into strips, crumple the paper and use it to stuff a scarecrow, snowman or dinosaur. For example, a dinosaur can be made from two large pictures of dinosaurs stapled back to back and then stuffed by the children for a classroom hanging. Construction paper can also be torn into small pieces and glued onto a picture to make a collage.

2. Tweezers or small tongs: Over-sized tweezers, such as those found in the game “Bedbugs” by Milton Bradley, are good for developing opposition of the fingers. Also look in kitchen stores for small tongs. Strawberry hullers work well for little fingers in picking up small objects. You can make pictures place drops of glue on the pictures and use tweezers to pick up small items to decorate pictures (can be beads, popcorn kernels, dry beans, cheerios, etc)

3. Lacing: print favorite picture, color it, glue on to construction paper, let it dry, use a hole puncher, punch holes all around picture, take a piece of yarn or ribbon and lace picture – you can then tie a knot when done and make it a door hanger or type of decoration.

4. Eye droppers: These can be used at a water table in the classroom or in the bathtub or sink at home. Can use colored water and coffee filters and then make butterflies, flowers etc. http://www.dltk-kids.com/type/coffee-filter.htm

5. have a book theme day at least 1x a week . many authors have printable crafts that go with their books. Read the book and then make the craft  For example:
http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/hungrycaterpillar/index.htm
http://www.eric-carle.com/games.html
http://janbrett.com/put_the_animals_in_the_mitten.htm (one of my favorites – also see http://janbrett.com/activities_pages.htm)
http://www.everythingpreschool.com/themes/drseuss/art.htm
http://www.seussville.com/#/games

http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/rainbowfish/ (one of my favorite books!)
http://www.dltk-teach.com/books/index.htm (variety of books)

6. Finger puppets: For story time, use finger puppets on the index or middle fingers, keeping the ring and little fingers tucked into the hand. http://www.dltk-kids.com/type/paper.htm (scroll down - there are 8 different finger puppet activities – some that go with nursery rhymes).

7. go for a walk and find things in nature to use in crafts – e.g. leaf rubs, collages, painting stones, etc.

8. on your walk you can also talk about what shapes you see (e.g. keeping it simple for the age - house = square and triangle; trees = rectangle and circle; flowers = circle, straight line down). Then when you go home you can make a picture of something you saw on your walk

Have fun!

When I was the "room mom" for my daughter's 3 year old class in preschool, there were a few crafts that we did that they really loved! They were:

* Grass Man: http://www.craftbits.com/project/grass-head
* Frosting cookies and decorating them
* Handprint t-shirts (paint the child's hand with fabric paint and have them press their hand print onto the t-shirt - make sure they and you wear an apron!)
* soda bottle piggy bank: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/piggy-bank

I hope that helps!

There are a couple different $1 sections at Michaels. One has stationary, magnets and things of that nature but there is another that has SMALL craft projects.

I just made pine cone bird feeders with my 4 and 2 1/2 year olds and they loved it!!
We also planted cucumbers in small pots that we decorated with paints and put outside, we water them every other day.
We made collages and than framed them for our play room.

you can also do egg crate caterpillers with markers and pipe cleaners as legs.

Good luck and have fun!!

Get Finger paints, washable markers and a bucket.

Take your kids outside to collect leaves & rocks and then paint them.

We would also get out the easel, large size paper and glue the leaves on it.
Then they would paint around it with paint brushes. Makes a great work of art =-)

When my son was 3 that was his favorite and still is.

Plus, he loved making sock puppets with googly eyes and foam pieces that we cut up and glue to make mouth, hair, nose, etc.. You can buy those googly eyes by the buckets!

Have fun!

Hi M.-
I recently went to "Michaels" and found some really great clearance items for kids crafts. If there is one in your area you should check it out. I love going there, they have so many different things that you can make and create!!!

chasing cheerios has lots of fun ideas!
http://chasingcheerios.blogspot.com/

one we did, was mix food coloring in water in ice cube trays, then put a Popsicle stick in them. we froze them, and then used the colorful cubes to 'water paint' on a poster.

another with ice, is we hid lots of small object in a little box of water. we froze it, then gave my kids little tools and a pipette to 'dig' in the ice for the treasure.

you can cut out shapes and picture from magazines, then glue them into a collage, or make a mobile out of them.

I have this book, and it has lots of ideas for young kids:
http://www.amazon.com/Arts-Crafts-Busy-Book-Activities/dp...

My grandchildren always loved to play with play dough. Also, you can do fingerpainting and making hand prints/feet prints with paint. Also, you can cut out shapes (animals, houses, abstract, etc.) and let them use a glue stick to glue the shapes onto paper to make a scene.

Hi there,
Make a terreriam out of a used apple juice or other juice plastic bottle. You will have to cut it to form the lid & you might want to tape the edges so no one gets scraped or cut. I did it with a bunch of 3 yr olds a long time ago, it teaches recycling, gardening, patience and all kinds of good stuff. They can watch it grow!

Hi Momma-
I think it's musical instrument time.
Some you can buy, like egg shakers and mini moraccas, at guitar center, etc. Kazoos are also fun and available in many shapes, like a mini saxaphone, etc. I think you can those at walmart or target or babies r us.
But to make can also be fun. Get some old oatmeal containers and cut out some paper. Cover them and let the kids decorate with stickers, glue on buttons, finger paints, beads, etc. Punch a hole a tie a string through it. Wooden cooking spoons make great drum sticks.
Another idea is a rain stick. Get a paper towel core (or the core from an empty roll of toilet paper). Close off one end with heave paper and tape. Poke toothpicks all the way through at random intervals. Cut off the pokey ends that stick out and cover with paper. Fill about 1/4 of the way with a handful of rice or dry beans. COver the other end and let the kids decorate. Then, have a band meeting and "write a song" or a "rythm". Take turns letting the kids make up their own rythm and letting them be in charge of the new rythm. You can also do a march around the house with your new instruments.

I read some good answers and just want to add that I used to do a craft class with toddlers (mostly younger than three) and a key is to get things ready ahead of time. While they're napping or playing, set things up. You can do projects that are aimed at slightly older kids by doing a lot of the prep work yourself (i.e. cutting eye/nose/mouth shapes out of black construction paper to glue on cut out of a pumpkin).

Family Fun has a wonderful website. So does Disney. Just about any site that is for kids is going to list a lot of activities and crafts but I always like Family Fun the best.