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We love making our own greeting cards because aside from being cheaper and more meaningful, they also provide us with opportunities to develop language, be creative and practice some literacy skills such as writing and reading.
Ages: 3+
(See the Handy Tips at the bottom to simplify or extend to meet your child's needs)
Materials:
- Piece of thick white paper folded in half (for the card)
- Recycled artwork (any scraps of kids art work is fine or just some coloured/patterned paper)
- Scissors or cutter (we used a 2" circle cutter)
- Glue
- Pen
Directions:
- Cut shapes out of your recycled artwork and figure out your card arrangement
- When all your shapes are finished, stick them down onto the front of your card
It's funny to see what things children think of when asked about things that remind them of a person. Maddie's grandpa is quite the chef so to her, the only important things to him were his grandchildren, things to cook with and something to eat (something healthy and a treat apparently)
One of the best things that comes from being creative and making something visually pleasing is that children can feel pride about what they have achieved. Pride motivates them to want to try their best.
Handy Tips:
- Simplify this activity by having the child draw little pictures on each of their cut out shapes to represent their person. They may need more assistance in brainstorming and coming up with ideas for things that represent their person and how they will then draw those things. For the inside of the card, the child can dictate what they want it to say and you can write it in for them.
- Extend this activity by:
- Having the child cut out the shapes for the front of their card
- Encouraging the child to make a written list of their brainstormed ideas
- Providing limited assistence with sounding-out words to write on the shapes. Encourge the use of a dictionary for children who can read.
- Having the child write a message inside the card.
- Talking about descriptive words and language and focusing on areas of grammar
- Mix it up by using the same technique to make a personalised piece of art work. You could use this idea on canvas or even frame a piece of personalised paper with the design on it.
- Using children's artwork makes the piece even more meaningful and helps to use up some of that fabulous artwork that you just can't possibly keep all of.
- The inside of the card is equally as important. Children will learn that there are all sorts of styles of writing and letter writing is one that they will use fairly often. Encouraging your child to dictate their messages from a young age will aid them when it comes time to attempt the writing of the cards themselves.
- Using children's artwork makes the piece even more meaningful and helps to use up some of that fabulous artwork that you just can't possibly keep all of.
- The inside of the card is equally as important. Children will learn that there are all sorts of styles of writing and letter writing is one that they will use fairly often. Encouraging your child to dictate their messages from a young age will aid them when it comes time to attempt the writing of the cards themselves.
- Some more Greeting cards that we've made and shared.
(Click the pictures to take you to the posts)
(Click the pictures to take you to the posts)
Happy playing,
Debs :)
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