Stop Toddler Tantrums With These 4 Words

Last week we had one of THOSE days. You know the one, no matter what you seem to do the toddler is having melt down after melt down and the baby is getting into everything while you struggle to explain to said toddler that he asked for his sandwich cut in to triangles, so that’s what Mom did. I understand you think the sandwich tastes better as squares (even though you ASKED for triangles — my bad for giving you a choice when I know you are having a difficult day).

What’s a Mom to do? Well, my go to mood changer is these four words. “LET’S DO A CRAFT”. It’s like magic in our house and I really have no idea why. We color and do projects every single day. However, for some reason, the word CRAFT has magical powers (and now I’m thinking of that 90’s movie The Craft). Seriously though, try it out. It switches the negative brain to a positive one almost instantly. I don’t know how this works but I know it does!

4 Magic Words – Let’s Do A Craft

Because we can not plan for these moods, we do not plan the crafts. So what crafts do we do?  Easy ones with stuff we have on hand. Here are my 10 go to ideas if your struggling with what to do. Also, you can get most of this stuff from the dollar store. I usually stock up there just so I have stuff on hand.

10 Projects to Stop A Tantrum

1. Puffy paint. Mix Elmer’s glue and shaving cream to make puffy paint. You could do snowy scenes, ice cream, mix some brown or black paint in and make beards on silly faces. The possibilities are endless.

2. Googley eyes. Adding googley eyes to just about anything is an easy way to make something familiar seem new! You could try adding them to Playdoh to make Playdoh monsters or try blowing paint around with a straw to make monsters then adding eyes.

3. Make a card for a friend. Now, if you are a friend of mine, I know you have most likely gotten a card from us at some point, but did you know it was because we were having one of those days and needed to switch gears?

4. Melting crayons. (We can not show ours because we gave them away as gift) One time we ripped all the paper off crayons which took a really long time and is an activity in itself. My son LOVED peeling the paper. Afterward, we melted them in a silicon cupcake mold. You could use any silicon mold you have. Having boys, we had these awesome car molds which made really cool crayons! Here is an affiliate link if you’d like to check it out!  Silicone Cars Jello Chocolate Pudding Baking Mould Cake Decoration They are only $4.96 right now! They also have trucks we didn’t buy those ones though.

5. Make confetti balloons. Most toddlers LOVE to cut paper. So, let them! It’s very easy let them cut and cut and cut. Then, to clean up, have them put the bits of paper inside a balloon. Fill it up and pop it! (maybe outside, though)

6. Glue, salt, and water colors. Run lines of glue across paper then sprinkle salt over the glue. Lastly, just add water colors to the salt. It creates a neat effect. We did this for our Christmas thank you cards last year.

7. DIY bird feeder. There are so many ways to make a bird feeder. Some easy ways we have done are hollowing out half an orange to fill with the bird seed or taking a paper towel roll and adding peanut butter followed by rolling bird seed on it. You could even use a milk jug. You can make a bird feeder out of most anything.

8. Finding new ways to paint or color. Ask your child to paint a picture of the neighbors (See the pink painting, that is our neighbors. We walked it over and gave it to them as a gift!). Or paint different objects, toys or nature (we used wet chalk sticks) How about listening to music and asking your child to paint or draw what they hear? Try to think of something you haven’t done.

9. Popsicle sticks. You can make so many things from bracelets to boats. Here is a link to Kids Activity blog where they share 30 popsicle stick crafts.

10. Pipe cleaners. There are so many things to do with pipe cleaners. If you Google “pipe cleaner crafts”, you will see what I mean. We have made everything from glasses to bracelets.

They key is to always do something different and never the exact same thing. Also, have fun. Many of our go to crafts involve creating something as a gift because teaching our children generosity and kindness is very important to us.