Craft/Diy

A Fall Craft You Should Never Attempt To Do With Your Toddler

A Fall Craft You Shouldn’t Attempt With Your Toddler
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I hope you have been enjoying this beautiful crisp fall weather!

It has been so beautiful that we’ve been able to check off a lot of outdoor activities on our Fall Bucklist For Toddlers.

When the weather isn’t so beautiful there are still a lot of fun crafty activities for us to do inside.

Today we wanted to show you how to make this easy festive fall wreath craft!

I was so confident that this craft would be easy that I wrote the directions for this post before we tried to make it.

What a fool.

I wanted so badly for this to work and for Alexa to have fun making it, it just didn’t happen.

But life isn’t always sunshine and rainbows and we still need to put out a post this week.

So instead of tossing this one in the trash, we’re sharing our story with you.

Take this as a warning, do not attempt this craft with a toddler.

I’m leaving the original post and puttting my after thoughts in parentheses.

Enjoy.

Easy Festive Fall Wreath Craft

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(What a confident fool? There was nothing easy about this project at all.)

Fall craft supplies

You Will Need

(more patience than it is humanly possible to have)

– White paper

(looked forever before I could find that)

– Green, yellow, orange, and red paint

– Paper plates

(didn’t have any of those)

– Scissors

(I tired to use the ones that came with my kitchen knives 🤦‍♀️)

– Pencil

(once you have kids all of the pencils in your house disappear, it’s a fact)

– Ribbon, String, or Twine

– Wreath frame

– For this wreath I recommend using a foam frame, but you can also make your own by cutting out a ring from paper or a paper plate.

– Hot glue gun and glue for foam frame, or a glue stick for paper frame

(I actually had a foam frame that I had bought two years ago for a wreath I wanted to, make but never did. I was so excited to finally use it, but then I remembered I left my glue gun in New York two months ago when I was using it to make crafts for our wedding. But that wasn’t until I had spent half and hour looking for it)

– Newspaper

(I actually knew we had one when I was writing this. When I went to get it my husband informed me that he used it to start a fire)

– Bucket of warm water and a wash cloth

(I remember writing this and thinking I was so clever. Like a little bucket of water and a cloth was going to stop my little three foot terror from painting my kitchen floors with her feet)

Once we’ve gathered all of our materials then we are ready to begin!

Step One: Set Up Your Work Area

Depending on the age of your child, this can be a little tricky.

(A little?!! It wasn’t tricky, it was almost impossible and took longer find everything and get it together than it did to actually make.)

Alexa is almost two and a little bit mischievous.

(This is literally me warning myself not to attempt this and I didn’t listen!??!?)

I find crafts to be more successful if I set everything up first without telling her what’s going on.

(I didn’t do that. I seriously forgot to take my own advice)

When I tell her we are going to do a craft she gets excited and wants to start immediately.

(and that’s exactly what happened)

By setting up first, it usually stops her from getting into everything before I’m ready

(Wow. I’m starting to see where this all went wrong)

So, just a tip if you’re in the same boat as me.

(I have no words. I’m just staring at the screen blinking, trying not to hate myself)

Let’s Do This!

– Spread out newspaper to create a work area to help prevent painting your floors

(Unless your husband lit yours on fire. I should have given up here, but we were in to deep. Stop now and prepare to face total toddler meltdown. So I decided to sacrifice all of our beach towels to the fate of acrylic paint)

Fall craft station

– Lay the white paper in the center of your work area

(So I lied, this part was actually pretty easy)

– Squeeze a dab of each color paint on a separate paper plate

– The bucket and wash cloth are for cleaning up hands and feet and whatever else gets covered in paint when switching colors or whenever necessary

(Grab all the buckets and cloths you want, grab ten. Your toddler sees that and takes it as a challenge.)

– Keep all of your paint and other materials close by but out of reach of the little ones until you need them.

(I thought three feet was fine, but every time I went to grab something, covered in paint, she tried to follow me)

Step Two: Get Painting

(Don’t, seriously just don’t do it)

You can get as creative as you want with this part!

(You can get as creative as you want, but nothing is going to stop the horror that’s about to unfold in your kitchen)

I encouraged Alexa to try to make hand prints and footprints and she fingered painted as well.

(Not true. After the first color her only interest was the wash bucket and running away)

I found that giving her one color at a time and cleaning her up in between helped keep the colors from all mixing into an ugly brown.

(I ended up squeezing every tube of paint over the paper and begging her to see this through)

Step Three: Let your paper dry!

Depending on how thick the paint went on it may take about and hour or two to dry.

(or five)

You can speed the process up by using a blow dryer if you’d like.

(There no time for that. You need to save your kitchen. It’s funny how she wanted nothing to do with the project until I wanted to put it away)

Step Four: Trace your child’s hands and cut it out

(You can really see how oblivious I was to the danger of this craft because I skipped right over a step. The one where I dumped out one of her toy buckets and filled it with water. Begged her to stay in it and clean herself, while I scrubbed the paint off my brand new tile floor in a complete panic)

Fall craft fail

Really, all you need to do is trace their hand once, cut that out and you can use it as a stencil to make more.

But if you child’s enjoying you tracing their hand over and over that just adds to the fun!

(Ha. THE FUN. I cut out about 50 hands, if I wasn’t already going to get arthritis it’s defintely coming now)

Step Five: Glue handprints to your wreath

Now, I went with the foam frame because it gives dimension to the wreath.

(I’m still disappointed about this because I really think it would have been beautiful)

But, this means a glue gun is necessary to apply the handprints.

(Stupid glue gun)

So I did this part while Alexa took her nap.

(Ha. Jokes on me, she didn’t even take a nap)

If you go with a paper frame your little one while probably enjoy glueing the handprint with a glue stick themselves.

(Honestly as disappointed as I was about the foam frame not working out, Alexa actually really enjoyed helping me with the glue stick and this is where the whole thing started to turn around)

Step Six: Tie a string for hanging your wreath

(In hindsight, the string probably should have gone on first🤦‍♀️)

Fall wreath craft

Ta-Da!

It may have been difficult and messy and she wasn’t interested in the making-it-process at all, but we were actually both happy with how it turned out.

And while I’ll never attempt this same project again, I’m still glad we did it. Alexa lights up and points at it with excitement and tells me all about it every time she sees it, and for me, that’s more than worth the trouble.

What Did We Learn

-I’m extremely stubborn, but you have to admire my perseverance

-When working with toddlers it’s best to keep crafts simple and small, they’ll enjoy it more and so will you

-If a wash bucket is included in the items you need to do a craft with your toddler, DO NOT ATTEMPT THAT CRAFT WITH YOUR TODDLER

Well there you have it, the fall craft you should never attempt with your toddler.

We’re going to take a little creative break, regroup and hopefully put out a successful and original holiday craft for you and your family next month😉

In the mean time….

Check These Out

Magic Color Scratch Fall Leaves

Thanksgiving Harvest Foam Beads

Pumpkin Wreath Craft Kit

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Fall Bucket List For Toddlers

10 St. Patrick’s Day Activities and Crafts

16 Easter Crafts To Do With Your Toddler

A Fall Craft You Shouldn’t Attempt Attempt With Your Toddler

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About Sierrah Schmidt

Hi! I’m Sierrah. Welcome to Another Mommy Blogger. Subscribe now and follow me on Facebook and Pinterest to get all my mommy tips for making life easier on this journey called motherhood.
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1 thought on “A Fall Craft You Should Never Attempt To Do With Your Toddler

  1. haha I loved this list! I think attempting any kind of finger paint under the age of 8 is definitely banned in our house. We had just had our cabinets refinished and a long time ago our daughter decided the cabinets needed a painting too. Yikes!

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