Meet Laura, mother of two and member of our fantastic Parent Panel; a diverse community of Bright Horizons parents sharing their experiences of raising happy, thriving and confident children. In this blog, Laura shares some of her daughter's favourite crafts, inspired by Bright Horizons.
As parents, we’re amazed by the range of activities that our daughter gets to do while at nursery. Some of her favourite activities are the arts and crafts, and she’s always super proud to share something she’s made.
Our daughter has done things like:
Doing arts and crafts at nursery has massively helped with our daughter’s development. She’s become more creative, her fine motor skills have improved and she’s recognising different colours, letters and numbers now too, which is all great to see.
These nursery activities have inspired some creative ideas of our own that we’d love to share with you.
This is always a favourite of ours! Get your child to draw or paint a picture – they might want to some add fun shapes or stickers to it. Then you can fold the picture into a card and your child can give the card to someone special. Mother’s Day is just around the corner, so this would be perfect for that!
If you need an idea this Easter holiday, why not try making pictures from handprints and footprints? Paint your child’s hands with yellow paint and get them to do some handprints. Add eyes, a beak and some little orange feet and you have some cute little chicks. You can also paint your child’s feet with grey paint, get them to do some footprints and then draw some eyes and ears to make the shape into a bunny.
Another activity is making bookmarks. First, parents need to cut a rectangular square of card, then give it to your little ones to decorate. My daughter loves adding stickers, gems and drawing some pretty pictures on them but you can add whatever you’ve got at home. This is a simple but fun task, and your child can use their bookmark in their favourite books later.
It’s fun to do baking with your child and after the baking comes the decorating! Your child can decorate the cupcakes with things like colourful icing, sprinkles and stars, and then you can both enjoy eating a special treat that you made together.
Arts and crafts can be a great way to spend some quality time with your child. You can create some great pieces as well as special memories doing them and really encourage your child’s creativity. Give these ideas a go and let us know what you think. Thanks also goes to Bright Horizons for the inspiration!