- July 15, 2019
15 Craft Sets for Kids and Toddlers
Allowing your kid to set their imagination and creativity free in the shape of arts and crafts will help their cognitive development in more ways than you can imagine (…get it?). Holding a crayon, pencil or paintbrush in a deliberate way will increase their coordination and fine motor skills; experimenting with different mediums will develop their sensory and kinesthetic ability as well as their mental processing; self-esteem will rise with the completion of each project.
An often overlooked advantage of arts and crafts is that it lets you get in on the action, which will not only help you create a stronger bond with your child but will also develop their social skills. The list of benefits almost endless, and so is the list of products you can get.
Luckily for you, we have sifted through them to present you with this list of 15 best craft sets on the market today.
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Klutz Jr. My Egg Carton Animals Craft Kit
Here’s a fun craft kit that’s egg-citing! This is a cute little set that contains all the necessary supplies to make egg cartons into wacky barnyard animals. It includes 93 pre-cut shapes, a paintbrush, clear glue, 6 pairs of googly eyes, six cotton balls, acrylic paint in 6 colors, 12 egg carton cups and an instruction booklet which will show you how to make a pony, a goat, a hen, a cow, a turkey, a pig, a sheep or a chick.
If your kid wants to go rogue and try some things out on their own, that’s also an option, of course. We would even say that’s where the real fun begins because when you see the creations your little one is capable of coming up with, you’re probably never going back to the instructions again.
Benefits:
- Creativity builder
- Over 100 total pieces
- Award-winning set
DIY Soap Making Craft Kit for Girls & Boys - Make Your Own Soap Lab Kit
Your kid will have tons of fun alone or with their friends and siblings making up to 16 amazing soaps with this completely natural DIY kit. And when we say ”all natural’ we mean it – this kit contains no synthetic dyes, parabens or other chemicals; only the purest natural ingredients, making the soaps even safe to eat – although they are not particularly tasty.
This kit is great for boys or girls over six years old and is a great party activity for holidays and birthdays. The whole process is over in about an hour – melt a bar of glycerine soap, which is included in the package, add the oils of your choice, pour into the mould, and wait.
Benefits:
- Safe and all-natural
- No animal testing
Build & Paint Your Own Wooden Cars
This set from Made by Me! Is a collection of three undecorated and disassembled wooden cars. Your kid is going to enjoy building the cars and painting them with the colors and painting tools that come in the package. Aside from the 42 pre-sanded and pre-cut wooden pieces, the set includes sticker sheets, two paint brushes, sandpaper, three pots of glue, 12 pots of acrylic paint, and an instruction booklet.
This is an excellent kid for your child to work on their creativity, as it encourages real play as well as creative thinking. On top of all that, your child will have three fully operational push cars at the end of the process.
Benefits:
- Unique idea
- Teaches patience
IQ BUILDER | Fun Creative DIY Arts and Crafts KIT
Here’s another activity that could be fun not only for your kid but for you as well. The Arts and Crafts Kit from IQ Builder is a set of puzzles designed to put your brain to work and flex your mental muscles while building and let the mind relax and recover from the work while coloring your creations.
Coloring has a plethora of benefits for both kids and adults, as it enhances color awareness, stimulates creativity, improves motor skills, focus and hand-eye coordination, as well as helping kids learn about spatial awareness, boundaries, and structure. Adults find coloring therapeutic, so it’s no surprise that many parents report pleasant experiences of stress relief and relaxation with this product.
Benefits:
- Boosts focus
- Improves creativity
- Relieves stress
Playz Unicorn Slime & Crystals Science Kit Gift for Girls & Boys with 50+ STEM Experiments to Make Glow in The Dark Unicorn Poop, Snot, Fluffy Slime, Crystals, Putty, Arts & Crafts
This kit has everything your kid needs to make two kinds of glow-in-the-dark slime. It’s quick and easy to make by just mixing some water into the provided powder.
Aside from the powder and storage containers for two kinds of slime, the set includes an activity booklet with some fun challenges and puzzles, as well as an adventure guide to teach your kid everything they’ll ever want to know about the science of slime. The back page of the instructions even contains a fun little bonus experiment to bring the fun to an even higher level.
The Glow in the Dark Slime Science Kit is a great way to learn while having some fun. For a bonus, get your kid a little lab coat and some goggles, to make them feel like a real scientist.
Benefits:
- Easy to use
- Glows in the dark
- Fun shared activity
4M Knitting Art Kit
If you think the ancient art of crocheting and knitting are becoming extinct, you couldn’t be more wrong. The next two products on this list are fighting the good fight to keep these traditions alive by showing your kids and their friends what a great time they can have doing this. The Easy-to-do Knitting Art kit from 4M will teach your kid the hobby of knitting and will get them hooked on making little gifts for friends and family for a lifetime.
The set includes a detailed instruction manual on how to knit, a couple of plastic knitting needles and enough yarn for a tablet case, pillow, and a mini handbag. The product challenges your kids’ imagination and motor skills.
Benefits:
- Keeping the art alive
- You’ll get lovely gifts from your kid
- Safe and high-quality materials
4M Easy-to-Do Crochet Kit
The other product in the ”keep the craft alive’ set also comes from 4M and comprises of a plastic needle, seven colorful yarns, and two crocheting hooks. With this kit, your child can make three out of the following four: handbag, belt, or coaster. It also includes an instruction book explaining the art of crocheting over 14 detailed pages.
For any aspiring artists and art-history enthusiasts, this set is perfect, just like the previous one on this list. In fact, why not get both! Neither game is intended for advanced artists but works perfectly well for those who are just starting. It will work on your kid’s artistic skill and creativity.
Benefits:
- Perfect for beginners
- Great value
4M Magnetic Mini Tile Art
A new and inventive way for your kid to create and display their art; this great little product is simple in the best sense of the word. The idea is for your kid the paint the tiles, put a magnet on the back and voila – their work of art is ready for display on the fridge, filing cabinet, locker or any other metal surface, making them more glamorous in the process.
With the Magnetic Mini Tile Art set from 4M it is so easy for your kid to display their original pieces. The set includes rubber magnets, 12 tiles, five different paint colors, a paintbrush, double-sided tape, and a detailed instruction book. Your kid will also enjoy sharing this activity with friends and thus work on their social skills.
Benefits:
- Simple and effective
- Improves social skills
- Original gift
Mosaiz Fabric Markers Set of 26 colors, Fabric Pens Permanent No Bleed, Canvas Markers Fabric Paint Pens, Fabric Crayons for Fabric Decorating, With Gold and Silver Shirt Paint and 36 Letter Stencils
Have you ever been in the mood to do something creative but didn’t have the right materials or tools for the job? And by the time you get around to acquiring those materials and tools, the creative urge usually dissipates.
Well, worry no more, because, with the Tote Decorating Kit with Canvas Bags from Lifetime Inc, everything is included! You get colorful fabric markers; two heavy-duty canvas bags made entirely from cotton, a shapes stencil, and an alphabet stencil. Your kid will love playing with this kit, but there’s no upper age limit, and we know you’d like to give this a shot as well.
Also, we know what you’re thinking, and yes, you can purchase the bags separately and keep using the stencils and markers for a long, long time.
Benefits:
- Great for kids and adults
- Lots of replay value
Just My Style ABC Beads
A great introduction to jewelry making, the ABC Beads kit from My Style allows your little girl to create over forty unique jewelry design to share or wear. The package includes 84 alphabet charms, 216 alphabet beads, 500 colorful accent beads, 10-star beads, elastic cording, a plastic key ring, seed beads, and easy-to-follow instructions, making for a virtually infinite number of combinations to create unique and special bracelets and explore her creativity.
The lettered beads let your kid spell out names, phrases, and personalized messages on all of her creations. Mixing and matching the beading strings and jewelry cords adds to the creativity and unique feel to the entire experience.
Benefits:
- Improves fine motor skills
- Encourages self-expression
- Improves counting
Glittery Garden Girls Jewelry Making Kit
This is a complete jewelry-making kit that will work to develop your kid’s creativity skills through the creation of something beautiful. The Pendant Jewelry Crafting Kit from Glittery Garden is perfect for any occasion, whether it is a birthday party, sleepover, or just an exciting night in. It’s a lot of fun, not only for kids, but for adults and teens as well, and can keep anyone with a creative mind entertained for hours.
If you’d like to receive personalized gifts from your little girl in the future, this is the first step toward that goal. She can learn how to create unique bracelets and necklaces, and you can be on the receiving end of that creative process.
Benefits:
- Creativity builder
- Great for any occasion
Moose Toys Chocolate Bar Maker
What if you could make your chocolate bar? Well, you can, and so can your kid with the Chocolate Bar Maker from Moose Toys. This little chocolate connoisseur’s kit lets your kid customize and mold chocolate bars exactly how they like them! It comes with four molds, sharing filling pockets, mold inserts for pattern stamps, labels, wrappers and a squeezer for decorating. You’re going to have to get your favorite chocolate separately.
How it works is you break up the chocolate into small pieces, throw them into the squeezer and the microwave – remember to take the lid off. Melting time depends on the type of chocolate, but it’s usually no longer than 20 seconds. After this, squeeze the chocolate into the molds, decorate with any filling you like, put in the freezer for about 15 minutes, and voila!
Benefits:
- Chocolate!
- Chocolate!
- Have we already said ”chocolate’?
Hide and Seek Rock Painting Kit
Hiding painted and personalized rocks has become a strange new worldwide phenomenon. ”Kindness rocks’ is the name of the game, and it entails leaving messages for other people to find and then either keep or hide again for someone else to uncover.
So the message is positive, and however odd it may seem, it’s always good to give your kids a chance to put some kindness and happiness into the world. You can even take part in it yourself and lead by example.
This set is going to help express your child’s creativity, not only in the color combinations they come up with for their rocks, but in the messages, they leave as well.
Benefits:
- Teaches kindness
- Great social experience
- A simple and effective idea
Enchanted Fairy Garden Craft Kit
Everything your kid needs to create a magical mini indoor garden is included in this kit. Just let them add their creative ideas, and a little bit of water.
The first thing they will need to get out of the box is a cute flower shaped garden dish, followed by potting mix, wheat grass seeds, magic beans, tiny toadstools, a little fairy, and a fairy house, paint and all the crafting supplies needed to decorate a garden.
So, the trick is to paint the garden dish, and while your little one waits for the garden to dry, they can paint their toadstools and the fairy house. Help them plant the beans and arrange the garden, and in about seven days, you’ll have the start of a magical fairy world.
Benefits:
- Teaches about plants
- Non-toxic materials
- Easy to set up
Your Décor Color Your Water Bottle
Customizing and decorating their stuff at an early age is one of the best things your child can do to develop their creativity, and it’s just really, really fun. This kit includes markers and a water bottle, as well as glam and glitter to be able to make the design as personalized as possible.
The bottle itself has been made with BPA free materials, which means you don’t need to worry about safety, and your little one can remain hydrated in style. Let your little girl’s imagination go wild, allow her to express herself, and show off her creativity through creating an utterly customized water bottle. This is a powerful tool for exploring your kid’s creative side.
Benefits:
- Safe materials
- Creative outlet
- Great for use on-the-go
How to Choose the Best Kids Craft Kits?
There’s nothing that shows other people that you’re proud of your kid’s artistic abilities quite like a fridge door plastered with their art. If you’re starting to forget the color your fridge originally was, beneath your child’s artistic creations, you’re on the right track. Since iceboxes are rarely the most visually appealing items we own, they have unsurprisingly been serving as art galleries for families since they were invented.
As your kids grow older, they will take up more and more space on the fridge, though, and it might be time to start looking into other ways for them to express themselves creatively, like jewelry-making or gardening. They might start losing interest in some of their older creations, and that’s when you’re going to have to make some decisions in terms of what to keep and what to get rid of. Remember – there’s a fine line between being emotional about your kid’s stuff and mindless hoarding.
We’ve tried to create a list of crafting kits and sets that might help your child create something useful and worth keeping for a long time, or at the very least – something that doesn’t take up too much space. As always, we recommend taking a good look at the choices we made and thinking about what it is that your kid would appreciate the most.
Criteria We Used
Safety
Craft kits are one of the rare types of toy where you usually don’t have to worry too much about safety since there aren’t that many things that could go wrong. What is of utmost importance, and which we have taken care of while creating this list, as usual, are the materials used?
We made sure that they were safe and of the highest quality, so if you’re picking something from this list, there’s nothing to worry about.
Mental Development
Among the plethora of benefits that come with engaging in a crafty project, the most prominent one in our minds is the fact that this engaging and creative mental work will get your kid off their phone and give them a social experience that is hard to come by in the world of non-stop online connectivity.
Expressing themselves creatively in a healthy social setting will do wonders for their self-esteem and social development.
Physical Development
In the most traditional sense, working with arts and crafts kits is not the most physically challenging thing in the world. But there’s more to physical development than strength, balance or speed.
By creating art, your child is going to develop some essential physical skills, like fine motor movement, hand-eye coordination, and dexterity.
FAQ
My husband and I are not very artistic… we're quite terrible at art. Should our child even be trying to get involved with this, or will it just lead to inevitable disappointment?
The fact that you or your spouse do not have a developed artistic skill is not an indicator that your child can’t be a true protégé. It’s too early to tell at this point whether or not your kid can be an artist, but it can’t hurt to try.
Don’t focus on trying to get them to draw perfectly; just let them have fun and enjoy the process. It’s OK if they are terrible too, art is all about creative expression.
Should I start by drawing something for my child to copy?
Not really. When a kid learns how to copy drawings, it doesn’t do much for their creative process. At a very young age, you should let your kid learn how to love drawing first, even if it means creating an indistinguishable mess. Think of it as abstract art.
If you want them to have a more structured approach, the best you can do is point out some objects in the environment for them to try to put on paper. This will teach perspective more fluidly.
Conclusion
If you want your kid to unleash their creativity and express themselves, arts and crafts are the way to go. This type of activity will give them hours upon hours of fun, while at the same time developing their fine motor skills, self-esteem, and cognitive thinking. On top of that, you can quickly get involved for some quality time with your children.
We hope you appreciate the hard work and thoughtful examination that went into creating this list. If none of the products from the list itself caught your attention, we hope we’ve at least provided you with some inspiration on your quest to find the perfect arts and crafts kit for your little one.
Catherine is a writer from Canada who simply loves toys, collectibles and superhero figurines. Writing is her passion, but she also loves reading, enjoying her “me time” and finding new ways to improve her work and ways to entertain the readers.
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