Easy Father's Day Craft for Toddlers and Young Kids

Last year I had Lucas make a cute craft for Dan for Father's Day. (I'm going to assume that you all know that "had Lucas make a craft" actually translates to "I mostly made the craft with Lucas doing a few elements of it with lots of help because, come on people, he was two years old last year. I mean, he's smart, but he doesn't know how to do woodworking yet or anything. Though, to be fair, I don't know how to do woodworking either. And I'm 32.")

Moving on... I was going to post this craft last year, but I wanted to wait until I (I mean Lucas) had actually given it to Dan first, which wasn't until Father's Day evening. And then I kind of forgot to post it. Then I remembered to post it this year because my phone started blowing up with Pinterest notifications that people were pinning this Father's Day craft from two years ago, and I was like, "Oh, shoot! Is it that time already??" (What are the chances that I could just repeat one of the two crafts that Lucas already did and Dan wouldn't notice??)

Anyway, here it is:

Ta DA!! Like that clever "hands down" phrase with the hands actually pointing down?? Well, I did not even think of that at all. I told my friend Courtney what Lucas was making Dan for Father's Day, and I was like, "It will say 'Best Daddy Ever, Hands Down' and it will have his hand prints on it! Cute, right?" And she was like, "So cute! And the hand prints will be pointing down?" And I was like, "....huh. That kind of makes more sense than the way I was going to do it." (Also, this is why you cannot feel intimidated by projects that you see on Pinterest where they look all amazing and you think, "These people are more creative than I could ever be in my entire life." Because it's entirely possible that originally they were going to accompany the phrase "hands down" with a picture of hands facing up before someone else pointed out that it didn't make any sense that way.)

I had Lucas paint several pages (I like using Crayola Color Wonder paper* and paints* because they don't change colors until the paint is on the special paper. Which majorly cuts down on mess. That's what I used here.) Then we picked the best one, and used it as a background. For the hand prints, we used a washable ink pad and some card stock, and Lucas made about 50 prints (it's a pretty good time-waster.)

Then I cut two out, glued them on the paper, mounted the whole thing on a larger piece of card stock with some decorative tape, and added letter stickers. I was going to frame it, but I realized that if I have both kids make wall art for Dan every year for Father's Day, we will very rapidly run out of wall space. So we gave it to him as a card, and then put it in a book I made to store Lucas's art.

The beauty of this craft is that you can even do it with a baby, assuming you can get a fairly recognizable hand print from them. (Good luck. It's hard. But possible.)

So there you have it, an easy Father's Day craft your kids can do by themselves (maybe)! Hopefully I'll think of another cute one for this year. If I do, I'll be sure to share it with you all... a year from now. I'm sure you'll all be on the edge of your seats until then.



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