Grandparent's Day crafts are a wonderful project for you and your kids. Grandparents love to receive homemade gifts from their grandkids, and it's a wonderful bonding experience for all involved. Here are some ideas for some easy Grandparent's Day crafts.
Handmade Cards
Probably the best gift you can make for Grandparent's Day is a homemade card. Each child can make his or her own card or one can be madefrom the whole family. Plan out a design if you want or just spread all of your stickers, stamps, embellishments and art supplies on the table (covered with newspaper or a foam-backed tablecloth for protection) and give each child a card to decorate how they see fit. If you'd like to give them a little more guidance, ask them to draw something they like to do with their grandparents, or write a little something about what their grandparents mean to them. Kids can also decorate the gift bag or wrapping paper. Foam stickers are a lot of fun to use on gift bags and come in a variety of shapes making the bag almost as fun as the gift itself.
Memory Book
A wonderful idea for a Grandparent's Day craft grandparents are sure to love is a homemade memory book or small scrapbook.
You can purchase a journal with unlined pages or a small scrapbook for the project, or make your own little book by folding sheets of paper or card stock in half. Use heavier paper or cardboard for the covers, and staple the sheets together or punch holes and use decorative brads, ribbon or raffia to tie the pages together.
Have each child fill out a page or two of the book. Have them write and/or draw about why they love their grandparents, what they like to do when they visit, their favorite memories of being with their grandparents, or any other topic.
You could also add actual pictures of some of the events the children describe. This little book won't take a long time to put together but will quickly become a treasured gift.
Photo Album
If you live far away from the grandparents, a great annual tradition would be to send them a photo album of all the things the kids did the previous year. This doesn't have to be a huge album, but it should hit the highlights such as holidays, school pictures, sports pictures, any big events that happened that year, birthday parties and a picture or two of the kids with their friends. You could also make this a scrapbook by adding journaling. Either you or the kids could write about what's going on in each picture. This gift will make the grandparents feel a lot more involved in their grandchildren's lives, even though they live far away.
Picture Frames
If you don't live far away from the grandparents, you can still give them a cute picture of your kids. You might even want to set up an annual family photo shoot to get pictures of the kids together (or just take them yourself).
Have the children decorate the picture frame in whatever way they like, from painting to covering with stickers or paper, glitter or buttons. They could collect twigs from the yard and glue them to the frame, or use more of those foam stickers to make a frame for a picture (just place the picture on a piece of cardboard and use the stickers to hold the picture to the board).
Family Tree
A fun project for kids is to make a family tree. Get a big sheet of butcher's paper or newsprint and hang it on the wall. Draw a tree (or have one of the kids draw a tree) and then fill in as much of your ancestry as you can. Families don't necessarily have to be placed on different branches, just put them near each other. If you have pictures of family members, get color copies made and have the kids position them on the tree. They can decorate the tree any way they see fit, perhaps drawing tree houses for the different families, adding their handprints (you could even make a whole tree out of handprints), making picture frames for all the little pictures and signing their names.
Working on this project is a wonderful way to teach your kids about their ancestors. You might even want to tape record yourself while you're working on the project or write down the stories you tell so that your children will have a record of the things you know about the family that came before them.
