Free Back-to-School Kids Craft: Color, Cut, and Glue Your Own 3D Backpack!

Free Back-to-School Kids Craft: Color, Cut, and Glue Your Own 3D Backpack!

Believe it or not, back-to-school season is here, and what better way to kick it off than with a fun, educational craft activity? This free printable Back-to-School Kids Craft lets children color, cut, and glue their very own 3D backpack — a perfect hands-on activity for the classroom, homeschool, or rainy day fun.

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🖍️ About the Free Backpack Craft

This printable activity includes one A4-sized sheet featuring all the pieces kids need to design a backpack of their own. The set comes with:

• A detailed backpack template

• Cut-out straps and decorative items like pencils, an apple, and a notebook

• Easy-to-follow folding and gluing instructions

• A finished 3D look when completed

Kids can let their imaginations soar as they color and personalize their backpack using crayons, markers, or colored pencils.

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✂️ Educational Benefits of Color, Cut, and Paste Activities

Activities like this one are more than just fun — they’re developmentally beneficial too. Here’s how:

🎨 Encourages Creativity and Self-Expression

Letting children choose their own colors and decorations helps them express their personality and artistic flair. It gives them a sense of ownership over their work.

✋ Enhances Fine Motor Skills

Cutting along lines, folding tabs, and applying glue strengthen hand muscles and improve coordination. These skills are essential for writing, tying shoes, and buttoning clothes.

🧠 Boosts Focus and Following Directions

This activity involves multiple steps — coloring, cutting, folding, gluing — which requires attention to detail and the ability to follow sequential instructions.

📚 Introduces Basic Geometry and Spatial Awareness

As children fold and assemble the backpack, they begin to understand how flat shapes can transform into 3D objects. This builds important spatial reasoning skills.

💬 Sparks Conversations About School Routines

While working on this craft, parents or teachers can use the opportunity to talk about what to pack in a backpack, what school supplies are used for, or how to prepare for the first day of school.

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🧡 Perfect for Classrooms, Homeschool, or Busy Bags

This free printable backpack craft is ideal for:

• First-day-of-school icebreakers

• Preschool and kindergarten morning work

• Back-to-school parties

• Busy bags for travel or waiting rooms

• Homeschool art and fine motor practice

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📥 How to Get Your Free Back-to-School Craft

Simply download the PDF printable, print it on A4-size paper, and you're ready to go! All you need are scissors, glue, and coloring tools.

👇Download Here👇

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Free Back-to-School Kids Craft: Color, Cut, and Glue Your Own 3D Backpack!

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Valentine's Day Crafts for Kids

Valentine's Day Crafts for Kids

Valentine’s Day is not just for adults.  It’s a wonderful opportunity for children to express their creativity and learn about love and friendship. Engaging in Valentine’s Day crafts also creates an environment for communication and bonding between kids and parents. Plus, these activities allow kids to create gifts for family and friends. Here are some fun and easy Valentine’s Day crafts for kids.

Heart-Shaped Cards

One of the simplest and most classic Valentine’s Day crafts is making heart-shaped cards. All you need are colored paper, scissors, and some art supplies like markers, stickers, and glue. Start by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting out a half-heart shape. When you unfold it, you’ll have a lovely heart-shaped card. Encourage your children to decorate it with drawings, love messages, or even fun facts about the recipient. These personalized cards are sure to spread joy!

DIY Friendship Bracelets

Jewelry-making can be a fun experience for kids, and creating friendship bracelets for Valentine’s Day is a great way to commemorate special bonds. Gather colorful beads, string, and craft wire for this activity. Children can develop patterns with the beads and give their creations to friends or family as a token of love. This craft not only allows for creative expression but also teaches kids about the importance of friendship.

This jewelry making kit is available here.

Love Bugs

Transform ordinary supplies into adorable love bugs! Using pom-poms, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and construction paper, kids can create little love bugs that symbolize affection. Have them glue googly eyes onto the pom-pom and attach pipe cleaners for antennas. Kids can get imaginative by adding wings made from colorful paper. These cute crafts can be used as decorations or gifts!

Valentine’s Day Wreaths

A heart-themed wreath can be an exciting craft to display at home. Kids can use a paper plate as the base and decorate it with heart cutouts made from various colored papers. Use ribbons, glitter, and other embellishments to make the wreath visually appealing. Hang them on doors or walls to add a festive touch to your home!

Jar of Love Notes

Kids can create a “Jar of Love” filled with sweet notes for family members. Provide them with colorful paper and pens to write messages of love, appreciation, or even silly jokes. Once they’ve filled the jar with notes, you can decorate it with washi tape, ribbon, or stickers. This craft is a heartfelt way for kids to express their feelings and share them with others throughout February.

Painted Rocks

Another fun activity is painting rocks with Valentine’s Day themes. Gather some smooth stones and let kids use acrylic paints to create hearts, smiley faces, or love messages. Once the paint is dry, these painted rocks can be placed in gardens, around the house, or gifted as tokens of affection. This environmentally friendly craft allows kids to be creative while also giving them a chance to explore nature.

Valentine’s Day Collage

Lastly, encourage kids to make a Valentine’s Day collage using magazines, newspapers, and scrap paper. They can cut out images and words that represent love and friendship, and arrange them on a larger sheet of paper or poster-board. This project helps develop fine motor skills and encourages teamwork if done in groups.

Valentine’s Day crafts for kids not only spark creativity but also teach valuable lessons about love and friendship. So gather your craft supplies and make this Valentine’s Day a memorable one filled with fun projects!

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40 Valentine's Day Books for Young Readers

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From Around the Web

Here is a list of Valentine's Day Crafts for Kids from around the web:

Heart-Shaped Animals from Easy Peasy and Fun

Fork Painted Love Monseters from Made to Be a Momma

Fingerprint Heart Art from Craft Corner DIY

21 Valentine's Day Crafts for Kids

Heart Wreath Ornaments

Valentine Love Bugs from Kids Craft Room

32 Valentine's Day Crafts for Kids from Stylin by Sarita

Paper Plate Hearts for Valentine's Day from Non-Toy Gifts

Suncatcher Ornaments

Heart Owl Ornaments

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Valentine's Day Crafts for Kids

Valentine's Day Projects for Kids

January is always a long month, but we made it and now it's February.  This means it is time for fun Valentine's Day projects for kids.  If you need a little inspiration to come up with some great ideas, I'm here to help.  Here's a list of great ideas for Valentine's Day fun with your kids.

Valentine's Day Projects for Kids

Let's start with a heart shaped sun catcher from Happiness is Homemade.

Here's an adorable paper plate fish craft.  This adorable fish sports heart shaped fins.  You'll find it at Artsy Momma.

These thumbprint heart glass magnets are so pretty.  This idea is from Rhythms of Play.

Create a Love Letters from God bulletin board like this one I found on Pinterest.  It's a great way to teach children Scripture verses.

Valentine's Day Craft Kits - 24 Sets Available Here!

Check out this 3-D Heart Valentine's Day Craft that teaches children about love according to 1 Corinthians 13.  You'll find it at The Growing Creatives.

Help your kids attach small wrapped pieces of candy to these Valentine's Day Scripture printables.  Then they can hand them out to their friends.  You'll find them at Not Consumed.

These thumb print Mason Jars are so cute.  Learn how to paint them here at It All Started With Paint.  After the paint dries, your child can add his or her favorite flowers to enjoy.

What is a craft day without at least one toilet paper roll activity?  Check out these Love Butterflies at Christianity Cove.

This Valentine's Bingo Game for Kids is available here.

Valentine's Day Book for Kids

The Berenstain Bears' Valentine Blessings

The Berenstain Bears Valentine Blessings is available here.

God's Great Love For You

God's Great Love For You is available here.

That's What Love Is

That's What Love Is by Hannah C. Hall is available here.

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40 Valentine's Day Books for Young Readers

40 Valentine's Day Books for Young Readers

10 Quick and Easy Valentine's Day Activities for Kids

10 Quick and Easy Valentine's Day Activities for Kids

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*Note:  The watermark on all the photos in this post refers to my previous blog which was named Mom is Forever.  All my former blog contents have been moved to this blog, Abundant Family Living.

Flower Craft for Spring

Select a Flower Pot

Painted flower pots are pretty. They are great for gift giving and they make great indoor or outdoor decorations. First, choose the right flower pot. Where will the pot go? Inside? Which room? On a table or on the floor? Will you need a large pot? A small one? Will you need a clay pot or a plastic one? Decide where it will go and then pick just the right pot. If you are painting a flower pot to give as a gift, it won’t matter. The person receiving it will love it and will find the perfect place for it.

My little daycare children painted small clay flower pots to give as gifts to their mothers for Mother’s Day. We used coffee filters to create pretty spring colored flowers. Here is what we did and you can do it too.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Paint Your Pot

This project can be messy so make sure you (or in my case, the kids) wear old clothes. I allowed my preschoolers to paint their flower pots independently. I wanted it to be their work, not mine. If your kids have the skills, they can paint pretty pictures on their pots. They might paint flowers, butterflies, lady bugs, cars, trucks, tractors, grass, bugs, etc. Let them use their imaginations. If they don’t have the skills to paint pictures or emblems, it doesn’t matter. Let them free paint. My preschoolers chose to use solid colors. My only guideline was that they paint the whole pot. I wanted them to cover it up. Mostly, I wanted it to be their work. As a mother myself, I knew their mothers would appreciate it more if they did all the work.

The following pictures show you examples of their work.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Coffee Filter Flowers

While your flower pots are drying, you can work on the coffee filter flowers. This can be done a couple of different ways.

Allow the kids to color the coffee filters with regular markers. Then, let them spray on water with a spray bottle. The colors will bleed together. It is fun to watch and it looks pretty when it’s done. Too much water will make the colors run together too much, resulting in a black or brown coffee filter flower. Spay on just enough to make the colors bleed a little bit.

*Don’t use permanent Sharpie markers for this. The colors won’t run together. We tried it once before and learned the hard way.

Let the kids paint the coffee filters with watercolor paints. The colors bleed while they paint. Then, just let it dry. This is what we did.

We painted 6 coffee filters for each flower pot.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

 Assemble the Flower Pots

While you are waiting on the coffee filter flowers to dry, you can assemble the flower pots. I purchased green Styrofoam balls from my local Michael’s store which were a perfect fit for our flower pots. I just stuck the Styrofoam balls into the pots and pressed down a little bit to make them a tight fit.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Secure the Flowers

We used wire wood picks to secure the coffee filter flowers into our pots. They have wire ties attached. I tied the coffee filters onto the stems with the wire. Another option is to use green pipe cleaners. You can twist one end of the pipe cleaner to secure the flower and then stick the other end into the Styrofoam ball. One more idea is to use real sticks. If you use sticks, you can secure the flowers to the stick using rubber bands or twistie ties. You can leave the sticks natural or let the kids paint them green.

The next photo demonstrates how I secured our coffee filter flowers. I grabbed the center of the coffee filter and folded it as shown. I placed the center at the wire end of the wooden stem and then twisted the wire around to secure the flower.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

"Plant" Your Flowers

Now, you are ready to “plant” your flowers. Just stick the stems into the Styrofoam balls. Press them down in there. I had to sort of hammer some of ours so that all the flowers were even around the pot.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

Finish Your Project

After we got all our stems secured into our Styrofoam balls, we fluffed all our flowers. Here is our finished product. The only thing I added after the following photo are the words “Happy Mother’s Day 2015” on each pot. You can paint on a sentiment but I was short on time so I just wrote it on with a permanent Sharpie marker. Of course, you don’t have to write anything at all or you can write something else entirely depending on the purpose of the gift such as “Happy Birthday” or “Just Because.”

My daughter made one of these for me years ago and I still have it. As long as it is kept out of the sunlight, it shouldn’t fade. It will be a pretty keepsake for years to come.

Image Credit:  Abundant Family Living

You might also like this cute coffee filter flower wall hanging craft.

Coffee Filter Wall Hanging Flower Craft