» Craft time with old magazines! Nurture Our Child with Love and Patience: Importance of Nurturing Our Child in Their Early Childhood Development

When you look around the house, do you find old magazines lying around the corner? Why not we use them to nurture our child’s recycling awareness this weekend? The global warming issues are getting more serious these days. We as adults can start educate our child at home about green living habits to create environmental awareness since young age. Of course, we also be able to occupy their time again in doing activity that is more valuable. So, talk about how we can recycle the old magazine to produce a nice craft work!

Lets name our activity today as “My house and My Tree“! (I believe you have better names for it! Share with me!). The idea is shared by a colleague of mine, “Thank you so much!”.

Objective

Create recycling awareness
Refine the child’s fine motor control - tearing, cutting using scissors
Having good time with craft work

Materials

magazine
scissors
manila card
glue
marker pen
plastic table mat or newspaper

First, we need to draw a house and a tree on the manila card with a marker pen. Then cut the shapes with a scissors. If your child is able to handling scissors well and have been doing some cutting activities, you may ask your child to cut along the outline of the shapes. This activity will help to reinforce his cutting skills on straight lines, curve line and slanting lines. It is a very good exercise for his fine movement! We can also invite the child to draw their dream house or favorite tree on the manila card too! You will be amaze how creative your child can be with his imagination!

Note : When the child is working with scissors, you need to be there to monitor to avoid accident!

Next, we need the magazine. Choose the pages with colorful pictures. Before tearing the magazine, do help your child to understand that he can only tear old magazines. Also, he needs to ask permission to do so to ensure that you or other family members do not need the magazine anymore. If we miss out this step, your child might get the idea that he can tear any magazine he wants at home in the future!

Young children (around 3 years old) loves working with scissors. However, as young children might not be able to control the scissors movement well, we can tear the magazine into small stripes. Then we let the child to cut the stripes into small pieces. Use a child size scissors that have blunt end! This is just to make the activity more fun as the young child have a chance to cut with scissors. If he is tired of cutting, then we can ask him to tear the stripes into small pieces.

Next, protect the table with a plastic table mat or newspaper because it’s glue time! Take out the tree and house shapes that have cut earlier. Apply glue onto the surface of the shapes. Ask the child to paste the small pieces magazine papers onto the shapes.

This is the end result! My beautiful house and the tree! Talk about the tree and the house with your child. Let him do the story telling! We are encouraging him to speak out to nurture his language development. After the activity, do keep this crafts because we are going to use it next week!