Crafts are a great thing. They are a fun and entertaining way to teach a child most any subject. They are time occupiers and teaching tools. Your preschool child can learn many skills and subject just by doing crafts.

I initially started doing crafts with my daughter around age two. Impressed by the simple crafts being used in the small library program I took her to I decided to incorporate crafts into our daily lives.
For young children, crafting is fabulous for learning basic skills. Almost any type of craft promotes hand-eye coordination. Kids can also learn to use scissors, measure and do lots of other things they will eventually do in everyday life.

When getting into crafting with your child here are a few things that worked for me.

Even though I come from a very artistic background (my mother has a Masters degree in art education and all of her siblings have degrees in art or craft as a business) I found I was not that creative in thinking up crafts for my child.

In the beginning I ordered a subscription to one of those craft of the month kits. While that was nice it can be pricey. So then I ended up buying craft activity box from Oriental Trading Company (because buying 12 of the same craft just isn’t okay) and again a bit pricey but she enjoyed it thoroughly.

We also have a few books that have helped.

Crafts for Kids : A month by month book. This book gives you detailed crafts coordinating for each month of the year. You get several crafts for each month.

The toddler and preschooler busy books these books incorporate more than just crafts into your young child's day. There are all kinds of activities.

Now that we are doing prechool at home there is a craft incorporated into each lesson. While I do read the lessons in advance and try to prep supplies for the week I found it much easier and cost effective to just order a collage craft kit that she’ll be able to use for quite some time.  Since I’m looking at crafting long term instead of just say for once specific craft or even over Spring break the cost works out.