Gifts a preschooler can actually make

Sooner or later a small person hands over a parcel and watches your face very closely. Sometimes what is inside is a mystery even to them. Sometimes it is clearly the work of an adult with a glue gun and a deadline.

The second one is the bigger miss. A gift from a child is worth something because the child made it, and a child cannot make something that looks like an adult made it.

Our rules for a made gift

Over the years we have settled on four, and they hold up in every room.

The child does more of the work than the adult. If we are cutting, gluing and arranging while the child watches, we have made a craft and handed them the credit for it.

It is process art. The child chooses the colours and where things go, and two children starting with the same materials finish with two different objects. That is not a flaw in the plan. That is the plan.

It should still look like a preschooler made it. Wobbly lines, a thumbprint in the paint, a name written with the letters running downhill. Those are the parts a grandparent keeps.

It should cost almost nothing. The value is in the hands that made it, and an expensive kit usually means a kit that does the work for you.

None of this is separate from the rest of the year. Our curriculum follows the children’s own interests, questions and discoveries, and a gift is simply an occasion to aim that at somebody they love.

Dough ornaments

Flour, salt, water and a good shake of cinnamon make a dough that smells like the season and dries hard. Children roll it, cut shapes from it, and press things into it.

Make the hole for the ribbon before it dries rather than after. That is a lesson we have learned the hard way more than once.

Left plain they look like old wood. Painted, they look like a four year old painted them, which is correct.

A painted canvas

A small canvas, a few acrylic paints, and something to paint around: a leaf, a cut potato, a hand, a ribbon bow pressed flat.

The child paints over and around the object, lifts it off, and a clean shape is left where it sat. It is a real technique and it takes about a minute to learn. Every result is different, and no adult has touched it.

A paper bookmark

A strip of sturdy paper and crayons or washable markers are enough. An adult can prepare the strip; the child chooses the colours, draws a picture and adds their own marks or name.

Keep it flat, with no small decorations to come loose. Tucked into a favourite book, it gives the person receiving it a little piece of the child’s artwork every time they turn a page.

A drawn portrait, framed

Ask for a picture of the person receiving it, or of the whole family, or of the child’s own house. Then frame it properly, in a real frame, however cheap the frame is.

A frame does something odd and useful. It tells everyone who sees it that this drawing was worth framing, and children notice that.

What to say when you open it

Say what you can see. The colours they used, the parts that clearly took a long time, the choice they made that surprised you. It goes further than praise does, and it is easier to say honestly.

Then put it somewhere it can be seen. That is most of it.

Kids Connection Childcare is family operated and has served Alberta families since 2018. Our two licensed centres, in High River and Diamond Valley, are open Monday to Friday from 6 am to 6 pm.