6 Fun DIY Projects for the Whole Family

Craft projects are great ways for families to spend time together doing something constructive. DIY projects are great ways to fill long winter days or stay cool and ward off boredom during summer vacations from school. Consider these six fun and family-friendly DIY projects to get your creative juices flowing.

Hand Family Tree

Paint a tree trunk with limbs onto a sheet of paper. Have each member of your family choose a color for their handprint. Each handprint serves as a branch of the tree and a branch of your own personal family tree. As you add more members to your family, you can add more “branches” to your tree. Turn it into a keepsake by adding a saying or name of the family to the paper and framing it.

Vacation Shadowbox

Memorialize your family vacation, possibly to DisneyWorld, by laying out your pictures and trinkets in a shadowbox. Add phrases using sticker embellishments, scrapbooking supplies or rubber stamps, ink and card stock. It is easy to hang shadowboxes on the wall to create your own wall of memories. If the vacation made you fall in love with the place, you can consider the beautiful homes for sale in Orlando, FL, and you can make the magic of your vacation a daily reality.

A Bow and Plate Bird Feeder

Turn your kids into nature lovers with this easy do-it-yourselfer bird feeder. Buy a plastic plate and bowl from your local dollar store. You’ll also need:

• One Large carriage bolt measuring 10″x 5/8″
• Three Washers to fit the bolt
• Three Nuts to fit the bolt
• Glue
• Nylon cord
• Drill

This is a project that requires the adult to help, not just supervise the project because some assembly is required.

Drill a home in the center of the plate and the bowl. Connect the plate and the bowl using the bolt, nuts and washers. Turn the plate so it is facing pattern-down on top; this will allow it to act as a cover for the birds. The bowl should be face-up on the bottom to hold the bird seed, and so the birds can sit on it. Use the glue to attach the nylon cord loop to the bolt so you can hang the feeder.

Bow-tie Hair Barrettes

Turn bow-tie pasta into wearable art with some paint and barrettes. Paint the bow-tie pasta with a desired design. After the paint dries, put a topcoat of clear nail polish over the paint to help keep it from chipping. Glue bow-tie pasta to a girl’s barrette that you can pick up at any big-box or craft store. Paint to bow-tie pastas with the same design to create a pair of barrettes.

Tin-Can Windchime

Create beautiful music of your own with leftover tin cans from your canned goods. Use different sizes of cans for a variety. After soaking off the labels and washing out the inside of the cans with warm soap and water, paint the tin cans with your design. Use a hammer and nail to create a hole in the center of the can lid at the bottom of the can. Use knotted string to attach the cans to an embroidery loop. You can hang the cans at different lengths but so that they can bang against each other in the wind.

Indoor Sandbox

OK, so it isn’t actually made with sand, but it simulates a sandbox that kids can have just as much fun using. Fill a big plastic tub with rice and colored pasta. Add scoops, buckets, shovels and other toys. Your kids can enjoy playing in the “sandbox” on the inside of the house when it is too cold or wet to play outside.

Creating craft projects with your kids can help to teach them some valuable lessons. First, it teaches them how your family can spend time together outside of watching TV, playing video games and being glued to the computer screen all day and night. It gets their creativity flowing and allows their imagination to run wild while teaching them how to repurpose common day times.

Image via evanstra!