Planning An After School Craft Date

It’s amazing how busy we’ve become now that the boys are older and are beginning to have school friends and extra-curricular activities. We love the hustle and bustle of the weekend but, unfortunately, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for relaxed creative play. That’s why we had an after-school craft date last week!

Pre-Date Planning

In order to save everyone’s sanity, we had a strict two hour limit to the crafty get-together (it was a school night, after all!) Because of the time crunch, I knew it was essential for everything to be organized and ready to go the second the kids walked through the front door. I covered our train table with some parchment paper and then laid out all the craft supplies the kids would be using. Bring on the kids!

Let’s Figure It Out

Last week’s craft party was themed around the Amazon Original Kids series, Tumble Leaf. My kids have been crazy about this show since the Summer when we all fell in love with it’s main character, Fig. He’s a delightful, young, blue fox who lives in the magical town of Tumble Leaf and has an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Seriously, we all love this show!

The Finding Place

One of my favorite things about the show is Fig’s Finding Place, a treasure chest that reveals an object he’s never seen before but that propels him to investigate. To celebrate this curiosity, we made our own Finding Places during our Craft Date! Each of the children decorated a blank box with stickers, glitter glue, and paint. They loved making their very own Finding Place after watching it on Tumble Leaf and I loved watching them explore the creative process!

Getting Creative

Since everyone was still working, we also watched a couple episodes of another Amazon Original Kids show, Creative Galaxy. In this show, Arty and Epiphany travel around the galaxy to solve problems with art, inspiring creative thinking through crafts, music and dance. I love that each episode introduces different art styles and artists. The content was a little too young for the five year olds (or they were too busy with their boxes) but the preschoolers absolutely adored it!

Success!

So, that’s it. Our super easy After-School Craft Date consisted of watching a few great kids programs, eating some snacks (Fig Bars, of course!), and enjoying the creative process with friends. I kept everything simple so that it wouldn’t be overwhelming for me or the kids. When everyone was done, I just rolled up the paper and threw it all in the trash. Hope you enjoyed this idea for an after-school craft date and have fun planning one of your own!

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.