I love Fall crafts. Each week I have one or two mornings when my oldest two kids are at school and I get to hang out with my toddler all by himself. It is such a treat!
My son is a big fan of buttons and glue, so we decided to decorate some Button Fall Leaves as a Mom & Tot Craft Time activity last week.
I am a big fan of activities that only need 2-3 materials and this was one of them!
Materials Needed:
- big foam leaves (we got ours at Michaels)
- Elmers glue
- Buttons!! Lots of sizes! (if your toddler tries to eat buttons, GO LARGE!)
Disclaimer: I love to use buttons with my toddlers because they think they are so fun to explore. I always supervise all activities with buttons very closely, since buttons are a choking hazard. Don't let your toddler use buttons unsupervised!
To create these button leaves just hand your toddler the glue bottle and let him squeeze! This is such a good activity for strengthening hand/finger muscles!
Often toddlers will want to see what happens if they squeeze huge globs. If you don't want them sqeezing the whole thing of glue out then you may want to do some of the squeezing too.
With toddlers you have to model how to use materials. Don't say things like, "Don't eat the glue"... but rather, "squeeze the glue on the paper" or other simple directions instead. You want to tell the child what you WANT them to do.
If your child tries putting buttons in his mouth, remind your child that "we put buttons on the glue, we don't eat buttons." Say the positive direction FIRST! If your child continues to put buttons in his mouth, remove them and continue on creating your own artwork with the buttons while having fun! My kids always realize pretty quickly that they'd much rather be creating in cool ways like me using buttons than sitting and watching.
Using colored glue with this project could be fun too!
Once our leaf creations are finished and all dry then I look to look for ways to use them around our house. Sometimes I'll string them up to make a Fall banner. Sometimes we just stick them up for display on our walls.
Like Fall toddler crafts and activities? Here are a few other favorites...
Fall Textured Apples from From ABCs to ACTs.
LEGO stamped corn from Crafty Morning
Fall Leaf Window Stickers from Mess for Less
Fabulous Autumn activity esp for our Hawai'i keiki who don't experience the changing of the seasons with the changing of the colors of the leaves. The trees pretty much keep their green leaves year-long here. I love your positive prompts re: small-size chokable (such a word?) objects. Mahalo for sharing.