As the days of summer stretch ahead of us, it can be tough to keep everyone entertained. Embrace the patriotic vibes of July and enjoy some of our favorite patriotic crafts that can be made with simple, everyday supplies.
Tips Before You Begin Your Patriotic Crafts
To maximize fun and minimize parent stress, take a few moments to set everyone up for success! We use an old bed sheet to cover up our kitchen table to save it from glue, paint, and scissor scratches. The cooking concept of “mise en place” applies to crafting, too! Just as you get out the necessary items for following a recipe, also ensure you have all of the needed pieces for the craft set out in the order you will use them. Dress kids in clothes that are okay to get splattered with a little bit of paint or glue. Finally, have a wet cloth or baby wipes at the ready so painty hands don’t get out of control!
Fork Fireworks
Supplies: Red and blue washable tempera paints, forks, paper, or paper plates.
Squeeze a small amount of red and blue paint onto a paint palette, paper plate, or whatever you have on hand. Dip the back of a fork in one paint color at a time. Press the back of the fork down on the paper repeatedly in a circular pattern to create the fireworks. Let your child experiment with combining the blue and red paints together. Finally, dip the tines of the fork in the paint and make dots around the remaining open space of the paper to give the fireworks some added pizzazz!
Popsicle Stick Flags
Supplies: Six popsicle sticks, red and white tempera paints, paint brush, glue, blue construction paper, Q-tips.
Have your child paint three popsicle sticks red and two popsicle sticks white. Next, glue the left side of these popsicle sticks onto a plain popsicle stick for the flag handle. Go in an alternating order, starting with red on top. Once the glue has fully dried, cut out a small rectangle from blue construction paper. Using a Q-tip, dip it into white paint and then dot it on the blue rectangle to represent stars. Glue this in the top left corner of the popsicle sticks.
Tissue Paper Star Sun Catchers
Supplies: Scissors, red, white, or blue paper (card stock or construction paper could work), red, white, and blue tissue paper, contact paper or lamination sheets, hole punch, ribbon or string.
Prepare by cutting out a star outline shape from the cardstock. Either cut tissue paper pieces into small squares or have your child rip it into free-form pieces. Place the star cut out on the sticky side of contact paper or on a single lamination sheet. This will leave a sticky space inside the star shape for your child to place the tissue paper pieces. When finished, trim the contact paper as needed. Alternatively, place a second laminating sheet face down on the project before sending it through a lamination machine. Hole punch a hole at the top of the star, string through a ribbon, and hang it in a sunny window!
Learning
While it may look like your child is just busy making art projects, these patriotic crafts actually lead to some great learning outcomes!
- Using a Q-tip to carefully paint for stars on the flag works on finger dexterity for fine motor skills.
- Mixing firework paint colors is great for cognitive development as they begin to understand how colors blend and change.
- Gluing down the red and white popsicle sticks for the flag helps with pattern recognition.
- Following a set of directions is great for executive functioning. It takes a lot of practice to understand the planning and sequencing of steps.
- Even just chatting about the crafts can bolster your child’s language development! When you watch light stream through the sun catcher, you can talk about transparency and opacity. Connect the concept to something else they are familiar with, like a glass of water versus a glass of milk. One is transparent and the other is very opaque.
We hope your kiddos enjoy these projects and that you enjoy the few minutes they keep everyone happily occupied! They are a great way to have some fun, get in some skill-building this summer, and add in some seasonal excitement for the red, white, and blue!
Very nice article Maggie!