Whilst spending so much time at home with our children it can be difficult to provide varied, stimulating and engaging projects for them to do. Here is our top 24 lockdown craft ideas and activities for children to do at home.
- Make a recycled cardboard treehouse
We have seen expensive wooden versions of these, but here is our recycled cardboard box treehouse. Ideal for small world play, why not include it in your tuff tray for children to create their own world, or have a deconstructed version for children to build themselves. - Make a recycled cardboard castle
A recycled cardboard box craft to make a castle. Your castle slots together with 2 simple pieces and can be stored away easily. It could be a Kings Camelot Castle or a Fairy Princess castle. You could have dragons in the dungeon or Trolls in the library! Decorate your castle how ever you like – you could even have a Frozen Castle painted blue and sprinkled with bio glitter to make it sparkle. Light it up with fairy lights! - Make egg box mice
These recycled egg box finger mice are super cute and easy to make. You can then play with your Finger Mouse, creating small world play scenes and whole families of mice! - Go on a nature trail and collect wildflowers to sort and use once home
In the warm Spring sunshine we love to go on nature trails to collect an array of beautiful things! We really try hard to listen to the birds, the leaves rustling in the trees, birds singing and the crackling of twigs under our feet. We love collecting and displaying items in our tinker tray, where we can sort and arrange our treasures! - Make potions, perfumes and concoctions
- Make a small world in a Jar
These magical dream jars were inspired by the Roald Dahl Dream Jars. They are really simple to make and children can choose and fill their own jars with whatever takes their fancy. Dragons, Unicorns, Mermaids, Fairies, Pirates. - Make and retell a story in a suitcase
A suitcase makes a powerful provocation for any child. What could be in my Magic Suitcase today? Fill it with props for a story, small world creation or items that match the theme or topic that you are learning. - Make peg doll fairies
- Make a Volcano
This Papier Mache Volcano was made for a creative homework as part of a school class themed project. - Make a toilet roll tube castle
A simple budget-friendly recycled toilet roll tube castle – using readily available items such as toilet roll tubes and paint. Find out how we made ours here. - Make cork characters
Awwww…we loved making a whole host of these Recycled Cork Characters! From The 3 Little Pigs and Aliens Love Underpants to Superheroes, Farm animals, Princesses, Butterflies, Bees and a full set of Nativity Cork Characters! It is fair to say we got a little carried away making these! - Make a magic harry potter themed wand
The Harry Potter craze has had a huge impact in our house. My eldest loves all things Harry Potter, and I have to admit as do I! These handmade Magic Wands are easy to make and so effective. - Melt wax crayons canvas
- Make a basic stop motion video
- Make egg box flowers
Egg box flowers are so simple, and yet so beautiful. Once made, the flowers can be used in a variety of ways. Find out below how we made ours and what you can do with them. - Plant seeds
The Tuff Tray is an ideal place to gather all the items you need for planting seeds. Then make messy mud pies once the planting activity is finished! - Make a papier mache dragon egg
Papier Mache is a great medium to work with, we use it quite a lot and have made Caves, Volcanoes, and Dragon and Dinosaur eggs. This time, we have made a Dragon Egg, although it can be easily re-purposed to a Dinosaur Egg. - Make an air dry clay dragon eye
These air dry clay Dragon eyes are simple to make and engage boys and girls for a good hour or more. These would make a fab whole class project or would be a great activity at Beavers, Cubs or Scouts. - Make air dry clay dragon bones
A great topic for boys and girls! My boys love Dinosaurs so I bought some shaped biscuit cutters which included the bone structures of them! We decided not to make biscuits – but used Air Dry Clay instead! - Dig for treasure in a pirate themed tuff tray
My boys LOVE pirates, and the Tuff Tray is the perfect place to set up some great small world scenes and activities to explore. Below we show 7 of our favourite activities: Digging for treasure, Pirate Sensory Bags, Pirate treasure maps, making potions or Pirate Grog, Playmobil setups and boat making and racing! - Make a fairy wand
I borrowed my little niece for this activity, as I have 3 boys and none were interested in this craft project! I have a love for all things fairy, princess, sparkly and pink….so these tick all the boxes! - Make toilet roll tube ninja turtles
Toilet roll tubes are ideal for simple crafts. From characters to Christmas decorations and crackers to car garages and castles – recycling these everyday household items is a great way to start crafting. Here, we made Ninja Turtles! - Make a simple mud kitchen
- Make mud pies
Lottie Makes 
Love these ideas. We will definitely use some at earlylearninghq.org.uk. We have just uploaded the sensory resource. So don’t forget to take a look. Your cork people feature in the sensory small world play section. Keep safe and well, Katherine.
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Hi Katherine, thank you for this. I can’t seem to find anything of mine – probably not looking in the right place!
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