The Kids' Book of Craft Love

Excellent book. Fun and engaging activities for 5+ year old children.

Book lovers who feel bad even highlighting passages or annotating text: this book is supposed to be torn apart, and the pages turned into projects! If you are familiar with Flow magazine (which originated in the Netherlands), you will know the format of this book and understand this. As someone who even had trouble using stickers on a calendar as a child, this would have made me a little anxious, even as I desperately wanted to do every single project, in order, until the book was completed! Divided into four chapters, Write, Make, Play, and Share, this book offers a wide range of projects for children who have a fair amount of manual dexterity. Write has journals, cards, and directions for a zine, and even has a nice calendar to cut out and assemble. Make has an adorable forest to assemble, a box, mandala stickers, embroidered postcards, and some origami instructions. Play has a small booklet in the shape of a bear, with different animals that all need outfits. This alone would have kept me occupied for hours! There are also bracelets, puzzle cubes, and a kaleidescope with some mirrored paper. Share includes notes, banners, place cards, flowers, some folded gift boxes, and even more stickers. While the age range given by the publisher is 5-9, I would not have given this to my own children until about third or fourth grade, when their scissor skills were good enough to cut some of the smaller pieces neatly. While the scope of the projects would be appreciated by younger readers, I plan to give this book to a 7th grader who likes to do origami and create personalized greeting cards, and I think she will be very happy with the array of projects. While I didn't open all of the envelopes (which are firmly glued down), one review mentioned a needle for sewing cards. It's quite a nice yarn needle with a large eye, but children younger than third grade might benefit from supervision when using it. The directions are at the beginning of the chapter, because the pages with the materials need to be removed. There are not a lot of instructions, and this is another reason why this might be better used by an older child who has some previous experience with paper crafts. I've worked with a lot of middle schoolers, and very few of them can even thread sewing needles, so younger children might need more assistance with the projects, which would make a nice activity for them to do with an older sibling or with an adult. I've not seen anything quite like this; the paper is lovely, and there are a lot of the much coveted stickers that always seemed "too good" to use when I was young. This would make an exquisite gift for a crafty young person, and requires only basic additional supplies like colored pencils, scissors, tape, and glue.

This craft book is incredibly unique and fun! I was expecting it to include pictures, supply lists, and instructions for making different types of crafts, but instead, the book itself contains almost everything you need for completing the projects inside. This is the kind of book that you take apart to do each craft, with perforated pages printed with designs to cut out, color, fold, and create. A quick safety warning! There is a needle in a small envelope, stuck to a page about halfway through the book. Parents of kids who are very young, or very irresponsible, may want to remove the needle before giving kids the book. The needle is only necessary for one project, and comes with embroidery thread for doing that project. I think it's great that the book includes tools for completing that craft, but because some kids may misuse or lose the needle, parents should be aware of the safety hazard. The book includes a really great range of different crafts, and I was impressed to see how many things the authors came up with. There's even a couple of countdown calendars to make, all within the pages of this book! There is also a kaleidoscope to make, coloring pages, special boxes to fold, stationery, stickers, and banners. This book is really great for the price, because it is packed with entertaining and unique craft activities that kids can do without any expense for other supplies. Basically, the only other things you'll need are scissors, stuff to color with, and tape. This will mainly appeal to girls, since there are lots of bracelet-making activities, floral-themed prints and crafts, and feminine colors and designs. Also, even though this book is marketed for kids, it will appeal to teens and adults as well. In fact, I sometimes felt that the book's aesthetic was more grown-up than childlike, and when people appear in the illustrations, they typically look like adults. I thought this was a little odd, but the overall style and the crafts themselves will appeal to all ages.

I got this book for my 9yo boy and 6yo girl, they were SUPER excited to discover all the cool crafts they will get to do in this book! There is a lot of choice, so the hard part is picking one :) Our first activity included Bird Bookmarks Origami, and seasonal tree to color, cut and glue (still work in progress). Both crafts kept my kid busy and interested, mission accomplished! Each page offers a different craft, vibrant colors, thoughtful instructions, this is truly a work of love! If you get this for your own kids or as a present to another kid, they FOR SURE will not be disappointed. I would safely recommend this for any kid up until 10-11yo. Oh and by the way, YES yo do RIP the pages out of the book to make the craft, that is INTENDED, and something kids will certainly enjoy be allowed to do (for once!).

This book is so different from many other craft books in that it gives you many of the materials in the book itself. Often there are pages to punch out, special papers, stickers, cards, etc. that become the crafts themselves. There's quite a wide variety of activities too, so everyone is sure to find a few projects they like. The title of the book says it's for kids, but it's recommended for ages 9 and up, and I would say most of it is geared towards older kids. Some of the artwork for the calendars shows pictures of adults, and there are some quirky images of cats dressed up, but most everything is cute and done with muted colors. I do with the book was a slightly larger size as it would make it a little easier to lay flat and some of the projects such as the gift boxes or mini drawing or poetry "zines" end up being really small. Overall, it's a really neat book and would make a fun gift for a crafty pre-teen!