When it comes to getting creative with little ones and inspiring young minds, it can be a little tricky to find an activity or two that are safe and will also hold their attention long enough for you to fully enjoy the task at hand.

Whether you’re trying your hand at inspiring your little one to be creative or are just looking for a few exciting activities for the school holidays or a weekend at home, we have some great toddler-friendly arts and craft ideas for you below.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t go into these craft ideas with a solid plan or outline in your mind as these almost never work out well with our rambunctious littles – and so it’s always best to simply wing it. 

Self Portraits

One of the best ideas to try is the simple self-portrait.

You will give your little one the chance to examine their own faces and form that great sense of self-awareness and they might give you a bit of a laugh too with some of the whacky shapes they come up with. When you’ve finished, it’s always fun to swap tasks and have your toddler paint you, and you paint your little one!

This is a fantastic idea for parents looking to promote that sense of self-awareness in their little ones, and with early learning centres like Raising Stars also working to foster this sense of self, you’re on the right track to bring creativity and cognitive development together.

A Scribble Table

We all know that sketching on the carpet, the walls and basically anywhere there is a flat surface is a common occurrence with a toddler – and so now let’s let them do it in a controlled manner!

Whip out a huge sheet of paper that you can cover your table with, or the little one’s bedroom desk and give them free rein to draw and doodle whatever they’d like to.

You can also try your hand at some fun sketching games on the table, or play a round of tic-tac-toe.

Necklace Making

All you’ll need for this fun task are some straws (or even pasta) and some shoestrings and you’re all set.

Depending on how young your little one is, this will be a great chance to hone their fine motor skills and get them working on slowly feeding the pasta, straws or beads through the strings to create a necklace that they will love.

If you really want to take this craft idea to the next level, you could pluck some flowers from your garden and have the little one feed the string through the centre of each flower to daisy chain a necklace.

Paint With Toys

Aside from painting with brushes and hands, the next best thing is getting out the toys and using them to whip up great artwork.

Of course, be sure to choose toys that aren’t going to be ruined by the paint, and work to give your little one the chance to dip their trucks, cars and even action figures in paint and give them a huge sheet of paper to create.

Keep a close eye on this craft idea if you have younger children, as they might be prone to licking off the paint from their toys.

Paint Squeeze Bottles

One of the most fun craft activities for the adults and the littles is to fill your squeeze bottles with paint and go crazy on a sheet or canvas.

It’s always best to go all out for this idea, but outside the house given how messy it can be. You’ll be able to mix and match bottles and paints and work to make some truly unique and abstract art pieces that may or may not land on your hallway wall.

A big tip from us is to choose paints that go with your home’s colour palette, as a nice tonal abstract artwork from your little one might just fit perfectly in the home – so no art goes to waste!

A Tape City

Rolling it back to the car city carpets of the early 2000s, you can work to tape out your little one’s bedroom floor and create a nice grid-like shape that they can use as a city for their toys, cars and other knick-knacks in the bedroom.

Of course, this may not strictly be art and craft exercise, though when you’re working on a layout for the city, ask your little one to help out and create some great shapes with the tape you’re on the right track here.

Paper Pillows

For this arts and crafts idea, you’ll need a few large sheets of paper, some yarn and a threading needle to sew the sheets of paper together.

Work with your little one to draw out their favourite shapes on the paper and cut around the shapes and work to stitch these sheets together, fill them partially with cotton rounds or anything else relatively soft and you have some excellent paper pillows for decorative purposes!

As you can see above, there are a few ultra-simple though ultra-fun toddler-friendly arts and crafts ideas that will make a weekend at home with your little one a whole lot of fun, and you might even get a nice home decor item or abstract art piece out of it!