Mom and Tot Craft Time: Sparkly Fall Leaves

A month or two ago I shared a post called 7 Ways to Enjoy Being Crafty with your Toddler. It highlighted some of the simple things I've learned as I've crafted with both my son and daughter during the toddler stage.

Now that my son is in an afternoon Kinderprep almost every day, I actually have a little bit of solo time with my 21 month old daughter when she wakes up from her nap. Sometimes we play with her toys and read books and sometimes we try and do a little craft project... and sometimes we have time to do all three!

I hope to share some of the simple toddler crafts that I do with her as part of a Mom and Tot Craft Time Series.

My goals for Mom and Tot Craft Time include...

• enjoying an open-ended craft activity together
• reviewing language concepts
• teaching new vocabulary words

This week I am sharing a simple Fall activity where we made Sparkly Felt Leaves!

Materials Needed:

Pre-cut felt into leaf shapes, sparkly objects (we used sequins and buttons), and tacky glue. 

Directions:

1. Squeeze tacky glue onto the felt leaves.
2. Press buttons, sequins, and any other embellishments onto the leaves.
3. Let dry.
4. String several leaves up using ribbon and hang as a decorative Fall garland around your house.

Crafting along with toddlers is a great time to teach language concepts and even simple requests and sentences in a sneaky way. Whenever I sit down and craft with my toddler, I am amazed at how much longer she will explore the materials. I am also floored sometimes by the words that come out of her mouth... maybe because I am used to her brother talking so much that I miss things she says?

Words and language concepts we reviewed in this activity included: on top, under, down, up, color words, adjectives like sparkly, shiny, bumpy, big, little, etc., and then following simple directions/requests. Some of the directions were ones like, "Can you find the big button?" "Can you pick up the sequins off the floor?" "Can you press down the green sequin?" 

This activity also worked on fine motor skills and building some finger muscles because the glue was hard to squeeze and the sequins were tough to pick up! I love collage projects with varied materials for toddlers!

Do you have any other favorite simple Fall crafts for toddlers?

Here are a few of the ones I've pinned recently:

• Acorn paintings via Teach Preschool
• Yarn Stamped Fall Tree via No Time for Flashcards
• Yarn Trees via 3 Dinosaurs 
• Fall Cookie Cutter Painting via Dirt and Boogers

If you want even MORE Fall ideas, I highly recommend that you check out this beautiful e-book recently released by The Artful Parent.

The Artful Year: Autumn Crafts and Recipes E-book features 78 pages of autumn leaf crafts, Halloween decorations and crafts, delicious apple and pumpkin recipes, and ideas for celebrating Thanksgiving! I am excited to be an affiliate and share this e-book with you! If you click on the image below, you can see a few sneak peaks at some of the pages in the book. The Apple Cheddar Hand Pies look delicious!

To purchase the book you can click on the image above or in my right top sidebar. It is selling for $9.99, which is a steal considering all of the great ideas you will be getting! Click here to grab your own copy right away!

Also, did you happen to catch my October BabbaBox Sneak Peek post? There is a special discount code that only can be used until October 1st... so hurry and order your October box so you can discover what the surprise inside is!