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Today marks the beginning of February half term for many and during this week off school we wanted to share some fun and easy DIY early years crafts you can do with your early years children. These 3 crafts are quick, easy, and offer some great entertainment for your children throughout the half term holiday. Please feel free to share these crafts with your parents to encourage home learning.

*Always be sure to use child safe paint and scissors for your crafts!

Paper Snakes

Our first craft on the blog today features a fun animal craft – making paper snakes. This craft will help to hone a child’s fine motor skills and will also provide a fun toy to play with at the end. 

What you’ll need:

• Coloured paper (we are using red and green)
• Black sharpie marker 
• Glue gun or pritt stick 
• Scissors 

1. On an A4 piece of paper, draw some random blobs using your black sharpie. Fill them in. 
2. Cut your paper in half width ways. Layer the pieces on top of each other and cut strips of paper a couple of inches wide. You should end up with approximately 6. 
3. Take two of the strips of paper and draw the shapes shown in the images below. Cut them out and save them until later.
4. Shape a strip into a circle and glue it. Thread another piece through the first in a chain and glue. Repeat until you only have your front and back piece left. 
5. Take your tailpiece and glue it as shown below. 
6. Before glueing your head piece, cut a small tongue out of red paper and glue it to one half. Glue the other half on top as shown below. 
7. Add googly eyes, use coloured paper, or draw them on yourself! 

Pressed Flower Art

Fancy a child’s craft that will also double up as a beautiful spring decoration for your home? This next one is ideal for you. 

What you’ll need:

• Pressed flowers
• White paper
• Glue gun or pritt stick 
• Photo frame 

1. Open up a photo frame and place white paper on the back side. Allow children to arrange pressed flowers however they like on the paper. 
2. Glue them down using a glue gun or pritt stick.
3. Carefully place the front of the frame back on and secure it. Hang this in your home as a fun spring piece. 

Hand Print Paintings

Children like messy play, and we have a great idea for them to try this February. Using their own hand prints to make fun pieces of artwork can be a great way to play with creativity as well as to improve their artistic skills. 

What you’ll need:

• Paper 
• Paint
• A paper plate 
• A washing up bowl with water 
• Paintbrushes 
• A paint palette

1. Using yellow, pink, or orange paint – allow children to print their hand on a piece of paper. Once done, they can paint a stem underneath for a pretty flower piece. 
2. Have your child use red paint to print their hand. Turn the paper upside down and add black speckles in the hand print, then add a leaf on top to represent a juicy strawberry. 
3. Create a cute dinosaur using a green hand print. Once done, turn upside down and paint a long neck above the hand to create a neck and head. Finish with a smiley face for an adorable dino art print! 

We hope these 3 simple half term crafts will keep your little ones entertained and allow them to develop their motor skills next week.