Through an effective After-School Club programme, children should feel content and happy, not trapped in school for longer than their peers, which is where our KS1 craft ideas will come in handy. You might seek out activities that walk the line between constructive skills development and freedom of expression for kids to have fun once school is over. Craft activities offer lots of benefits in an after-school club.
Not only is crafting something that children can be left alone with to exercise their creative imagination, but it’s also an excellent way to practice the skills they’re learning in class, apply themes and topics they’ve discovered, and even have them work together in teams.
Here, we’ll cover eight foolproof KS1 craft ideas that will keep students in the zone during after-school club and looking forward to the next session.
KS1 Craft Ideas #1: Bubble Snakes
Bubble snakes are an incredibly easy KS1 craft idea and will provide hours of fun. Each child needs:
- A plastic bottle with the lid removed
- A sock or piece of cloth
- A rubber band
- A tray filled with water and washing up liquid
- Cut the bottle in half and save the top piece. You may need to help the children with this part as it could be tricky and risk them getting cut.
- Cut the sock so you have about 4” of fabric, including the toe or cut a circle of fabric with a 4” diameter.
- Wrap the sock/fabric over the cut end of the bottle and secure it with the elastic band.
- Dip the fabric end of the bottle into the soapy water so it becomes soaked.
- Blow through the bottle lid end to produce a long, foamy snake.
Experiment with adding food colouring to different soapy water trays to produce different coloured foamy snakes.
KS1 Craft Ideas #2: Edible Dinosaur Eggs
This is a great after-school science club idea and doubles up as a fun after-school snack, too. Challenge your students to make colourful dinosaur eggs. You’ll need:
- Hard-boiled eggs, one of two for each student
- Food colouring in different shades
- A bowl for each student filled with water
- Crack the eggshell all over by gently tapping it on a surface like a clean table. The idea is to crack the shell but not break it or let it come away from the egg.
- Fill the bowl with a few drops of food colouring and put the eggs in the bowl.
- Leave the eggs overnight in a fridge.
- The next day, peel the eggs to reveal a dyed crackle pattern across them.
Experiment with different types of eggs and talk to the students about how eggs vary and where they come from. For this KS1 craft idea, you could also discuss what dinosaur eggs were really like and task each child with imagining the type of dinosaur that would have come out of their egg. Finish this craft project by asking the children to draw or write about their dinosaur and its habitat. Providing each child with a mould like these Paper Mache Dinosaurs and some craft materials could encourage them to consider what types of textures their dinosaurs’ skin would have.
KS1 Craft Ideas #3: Marble Runs
Creating a marble run offers almost unlimited possibilities, which makes it one of the best KS1 craft ideas! The aim of a marble run is to get a marble from one point to another using gravity. You can use any craft materials or objects from around the classroom or playground to create a marble run, and they can be as big or small as you like.
Find ten fantastic ideas for homemade marble runs on Buggy and Buddy, including using toilet roll holders, pool noodles, and Lego. Constructing a marble run is a simple but super educational project for young children. Start with a small marble run task and gradually challenge students to create more difficult runs or incorporate new objects to test their problem-solving skills. Creating a marble run is a great team activity, encouraging children to pool their mental skills to overcome difficult obstacles.
KS1 Craft Ideas #4: Grow Cress Creatures
This KS1 craft idea gives children an activity and a little best friend to grow with. You don’t need to invest in a chia pet or Mr Potato Head to grow a cress character. This activity combines artistic fun with the patience of growing and caring for a plant. You can even harvest the cress hair later and use it as a garnish for cookery creations. You’ll need:
- Packets of cress seed
- Flower pots, one for each student
- Paints and painting materials
- Collage materials
- Soil
- Task each child with creating their character on their flowerpot. Remind them that the character's hair will grow out of the top of the flowerpot, so their face needs to align with this. The children can have fun painting on a face and features. You could supply pom-poms, ribbons, googly eyes, feathers, and even foam shapes for them to cut out and stick to their flowerpots.
- Hand out soil and seeds and have each child carefully fill their flowerpot and plant the seeds.
- Set up the pots in a sunny corner and monitor them for signs of growth. Cress takes no time at all to grow so soon you should be able to give the cress characters haircuts!
Cress characters will slowly grow and change appearance over time. Checking up on the changes to each flowerpot makes a good morning school activity each week so that the children can monitor their plants and feel responsible for them.
KS1 Craft Ideas #5: Masked Talent Show
Mask-making can provide children with a world of possibilities. The excitement of creating and adopting a new pretend identity helps children to think about other people and characters and how they might behave. Draw on topics or themes the children are learning about in class to help them develop mask ideas. You might consider:
- Ancient Greek plays
- Egyptian gods and goddesses
- Mayan masks
- Animals
- Chinese New Year dragon masks
- Sugar skulls
Put on an informal talent show where the children can take to the stage as their masked character. You could ask them to perform something their character would do, or perhaps they could come on stage to answer questions from the audience.
KS1 Craft Ideas #6: Set a Matchbox Challenge
This KS1 idea is extremely flexible and adaptable, with thousands of possible outcomes, only requiring imagination. The challenge is to hand out a matchbox to each child and task them with turning it into something. The activity can be suited to any age range with a little guidance. For younger children, simply collecting items with a theme from around the classroom and playground will get them excited. For a more complex project, you could ask the children to create a habitat for a particular animal in their matchbox or turn their matchbox into a vehicle somehow.
Supplying children with school craft materials can make the matchbox challenge more exciting. Collage materials like sequins are a fun, small-scale craft to work with, helping children practise dexterity.
KS1 Craft Ideas #7: Snow Globe Jars
Creating a snow globe from scratch is an amazing little craft project that’ll guarantee to impress students and parents, too. It’s not expensive to create a snow globe, and it offers children a world of choice as to what goes inside, making it one of the most spectacular KS1 craft ideas. You’ll need:
- Glass jars with lids, one per student
- The feature object to go inside the jar, more on this below
- Silicone glue
- Clear nail varnish
- Glitter
- Glycerine or baby oil
- Distilled water
- Create the centrepiece for your snow globe first. This can be anything from a Lego creation to a plasticine model. Non-porous materials are best for this. You could hand out coloured clay for the students to make a character or ornament.
- Fix the ornament to the inside of the lid with glue and let it dry. You’ll want the object to sit upright on the upturned lid, which will be the bottom of the snow globe.
- Fill the jar with distilled water (normal water will go yellow over time).
- Add a few drops of glycerine or baby oil and some glitter.
- Apply glue around the edge of the jar and then screw the lid on tightly.
KS1 Craft Ideas #8: Stress Ball Characters
This is a great idea for a KS1 craft activity to produce a fidget toy, ideal for children with ASD to play with to ease anxiety and calm down. You only need a few items to create a stress ball, but they can be customised in any way the children like. You’ll need:
- Balloons, one per stress ball
- Plastic funnel
- Flour
- Glue
- Craft materials
- Use the funnel to fill a balloon with flour and tie off the opening tightly.
- Encourage the children to customise the stress balls using craft materials like pom-poms, ribbons, googly eyes, feathers, and foam shapes. You could task them with creating a character or an animal or simply let them decide what to make their stress ball into.
