Tag: hot glue

Touch and Feel Shapes Board

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Veronika loves the bumpy feel of hot glue, so when I spotted this fun, tactile way to help a toddler learn shapes, I knew we had to try it!

Ideally I would have liked to make the shape outlines on sturdy poster board, but construction paper worked fine in a pinch. Using hot glue, make the outlines of as many shapes as you can fit on your piece of paper.

Of course the wonder of hot glue is how quickly it sets and cools, so within moments, I set this down in front of Veronika to explore.

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She immediately started shouting out the names of the shapes she saw. I showed her how to run her fingers around the bumpy lines of each, and she delighted in the feel. Without knowing it, this can be your toddler’s first introduction to tracing, which itself is the precursor to someday drawing shapes with a pencil!

There was lots more we could do with this little piece of paper. Veronika liked filling in the outlines with dried beans since the bumpy hot glue made little “containers”. If your child is learning to count, you can also count out the beans as you add them!

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Next we placed a piece of white paper on top and I showed Veronika how to make shape rubbings.

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She wasn’t very interested in that activity, but did like using a marker to color directly in the lines of each shape.

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Overall, this was a simple activity that’s easy to set up and extend in multiple ways.

Play with Finger Puppets

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Today, I got crafty for Veronika! Travis and I wanted to make her a set of animal finger puppets, which I copied from a template. Technically, the felt pieces are meant to be sewn together. But I will be honest: I cannot sew to save my life. What I can do is hot glue, and that worked in a pinch!

First, draw a template for the bodies of the animals on white paper. Pin the paper to a piece of felt, and cut out. You’ll need two for each animal, front and back. I used white felt for a zebra, green for a crocodile, yellow for a lion, and light blue for a hippo.

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Hot glue (or sew) the two pieces together.

Next I added tiny bits of felt for each animal’s features. The zebra got black triangles for stripes, a black nose, and pink ears.

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The hippo had a piece going horizontally across for his nose in the same light blue, as well as pink ears and eyes. The lion got a brown mane, and a yellow circle glued over that for the face. The crocodile got big white eyes and itsy-bitsy white triangles for teeth.

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Add any final features with a pen or sharpie.

These came out so cute! You can hold them up for your little one to see. Veronika might have been slightly alarmed at first.

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I named each animal for her, and made their sounds, and had them act out silly hand plays.

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Big sibs will definitely want to take a turn with the puppets on!

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Finally, we used the animals at story time. If you have books featuring any of the animals you’ve made, trot out the puppet to help bring the story alive. Or choose which animal to make based on what books you have at home!

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We’ll be playing with these for a long time to come, I can already tell.

Sombrero Station

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This adorable craft will keep kids busy if you have Cinco de Mayo plans for tomorrow! Travis and I made ours early, but the craft easily multiplies to keep kids of various ages entertained.

First, I hot glued one paper cup upside down onto a paper plate for each sombrero. Pretty, colorful plates work best, although you could use white if kids will want to decorate them with markers.

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We set out an assortment of decorations, including tassels, pom poms, pipe cleaner pieces, and a big dish of glue.

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Travis’s favorite decoration by far was to dip a pom pom in glue before finding the perfect spot for it on his sombrero.

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Ole!

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To attach tassels to the brim of the sombrero required more hot glue, so that was another grown up step.

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Now place atop your head and celebrate (glass of leche optional)!

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Foam and Cork Canoe

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This was not so much a craft that Travis and I did together, but more of a toy that I put together for him. It mainly involves scissors and hot glue, so definitely grown-up materials! If your kids are8 years old and up, they can help out with the hot glue under careful supervision.

I had actually hoped to put the little canoe together around Thanksgiving, when Travis learned about Native Americans and the holiday. But alas, at the time I didn’t have enough wine corks! With a trove of 5 corks now on hand, I finally got around to making the canoe. If you want a bigger boat, use up to 8 wine corks.

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To start, I drew a canoe shape on white paper, and traced that two times on brown craft foam. Cut out; these are the two sides of the canoe.

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To make your boat buoyant, hot glue together the wine corks in a row. Travis did venture over to see this stage, thinking it was pretty neat!

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Glue the corks near the bottom edge of one canoe half, then add drops of glue to each cork and press on the other half of the canoe.

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Seal the top edges of the canoe together with more hot glue.

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You can assemble your canoe’s passenger from additional shapes of craft foam. I snipped out red rectangles for body and arms, a brown square for the face, and a larger square of black foam for the hair, all of which I attached together with hot glue.

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Cut fringe in the black foam for a cute touch.

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Now we needed to test if he would float! To Travis’s delight, the canoe worked great.

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It wasn’t long before he grew impish and wanted to see if our little foam person could swim.

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This being closer to Christmas than Thanksgiving, he turned the canoe into Santa’s “sleigh” during his bath. Bath was nearly double its normal length because he was having so much fun. However you use it, a great floating toy.

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