We like to do easy crafts around here, but we especially like to do easy crafts that involve contact paper. Here's a super simple shamrock suncatcher craft that my boys made for St. Patrick's Day. It's a great way to explore natural light and practice fine motor skills such as cutting with scissors. It's also a great last minute craft to do for St. Patrick's Day since it requires only a couple of materials and takes only a couple of minutes to prep.
What You'll Need:
• contact paper (I pick up small rolls of vinyl book protector from Dollarama, which is basically all contact paper is)
• green permanent marker to draw the shamrock shape
• tape
• green transparency sheets or green cellophane (I buy a package of colored transparent index dividers from Dollarama for projects like this)
• scissors
How It's Made
Before making the suncatchers, I gave the boys each a pair of scissors and asked them to cut the green transparency sheets into all sorts of shapes and sizes. My boys enjoy cutting with scissors so much that sometimes we never actually make it to the craft itself. Obviously, we made it past this stage for this craft.
Once they finished cutting the transparencies, I prepped the shamrocks. I drew on the non-sticky side of the contact paper with the permanent marker, trying my best to draw a somewhat normal-looking shamrock. I then taped up the contact paper, sticky side out, to a window. I made one for each of my boys.
Now if you have never played with contact paper before, then you are seriously missing out. Whenever we do crafts with contact paper, the boys, especially my three year old, love to spend time exploring the stickiness of the contact paper with their hands. It's a great sensory experience for little hands!
Once the boys were done exploring the stickiness of the contact paper, they started decorating their shamrocks using the pieces of green transparencies. The great thing about crafts with contact paper is that items can be easily removed and placed elsewhere if wanted. There were many times that my oldest J moved the pieces around.
Eventually we are left with a pretty shamrock suncatcher like below. It will be the perfect decoration for our window for St. Patrick's Day.
Dyan Robson
Read more from Dyan here.
Married to her high school sweetheart, Dyan is mom to two boys, J and K, who also teaches piano out of her home. On her blog And Next Comes L, Dyan shares her story of raising a child with hyperlexia, hypernumeracy and autism, amongst a variety of sensory activities for kids. You can find out more about their story on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Google+.
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