Back to School Craft Ideas for Elementary Students

When your child got out of school at the beginning of summer, he looked forward to more than two months of freedom. The beginning of the school year seemed in the far future. The spent the summer having fun, catching up on lost time and barely gave school a second thought. Now school is starting soon and your child is not looking forward to the boring days ahead.

To defeat the "Back to School Blues" you must make going back to school fun for your elementary school student. These little ideas are great both for teachers and parents. Your students will change their mind about school when you set up a creative environment.

If you want to get the student interested in reading more books for pleasure, try the reading chain. All you need are strips of construction paper, of a variety of colors, about six inches long. When the student reads a book, he writes his name and the book he read on the construction paper. Then he puts the two ends tighter forming a loop. The teacher, or parent, staples the end together. When he reads another book, he puts the second strip through the loop before stapling the ends, thus forming a chain. Then chain gets longer as he reads more books. The teachers, and parents, can also do this. They can have a competition to see who has the longest chain at the end of the year.

Have you students make creative bookmarks. They will need strips of coardboard. They can decorate them with stickers. magazine cutouts, ribbon, glitter and buttons. They can also use these supples to decorate notebooks, binders, pencils, pencil boxes and lunch bags.

Another project is to make a collage. All you will need are some magazines, a poster board, safety succors and glue sticks. The students cut out pictures from the different magazines and glue them to the poster board. This can be a themed project such as finding pictures relating to fall. Another idea is for the students to bring in pictures from home and glue them to the poster board.

Have your students make their own personal journal. Have them bring an extra notebook to class. Have supplies such as crayons, magic markers, glitter, stickers, sequins and glue. They can decorate their notebooks where each student has their own unique book. On the inside they can draw pictures or write journal entries. This journal is good even for those elementary students who are beginning to write.

Do you use cubbies in you classroom? If you do, let your students make them personal. Your students can cut out pictures from magazines, make drawings, use photographs or anything else. They glue these to the cubby and they have their own unique place to store their school supplies.

Do not be afraid to make a mess. Elementary students love to work with their hands. Make a collage of handprints. Have each student paint their hands with finger paint. Then have them leave their hand prints on a poster board. Before starting this project, have the parents send an old T-Shirt with the student to school.

These are just a few ideas for back to school crafts. Your students will look forward to being in your creative classroom. Check with other teachers in your school for more ideas.