That’s Swell

I am gathering ideas for a craft for our preschool class in March. We will be learning about “The Great Banquet” told in Luke 14:16-24. For the craft I’d like to have the kids made a placemat. So I was Googling for some placemat craft ideas, and I thought I’d share some with you too! (if you haven’t noticed already, you can just roll your cursor over the link and a “Quick Snapshot” of the webpage will pop-up, so you can ‘preview’ the craft first!).

• Poochie Placemat
• Painted Placemat – just use a canvas placemat (from any craft store), add some masking tape (to create the grid) and let the kids paint! A great way for kids to start learning out art, and to choose colors/patterns for themselves!
• Chalkboard Placemat – love, love, love this idea! Maybe I’ll even make it for David and I!
• Fun Placemats – a ‘diagram’ that shows kids where to put the dinner ware – a great way to have them help you set the table. I think this is the idea I will be using for my classes (though I will copy the images for them, instead of cutting out circles, etc.)
• Snowflake Placemats – great for areas like WI, who just recently got some snow!
• Personalized Placemats – recycle old pictures/magazines
• Christmas Card Placemats – great idea! could use ANY old greeting cards…kids can take the time to find cards they like, and pick any arrangement they want…could make birthday placemats/gifts (using old b-day cards) for siblings, etc.
• Woven Placemat
• Starry Placemat – simple idea – add stars to border placemat – maybe add a poem in the middle of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” ?

How to make the placemat craft eco-friendly?

• Use recycled items.
• Use the back of a cereal box or cardboard box to make the placemat
• Add old pictures or magazine pictures (you know all those pictures that get developed but didn’t really ‘turn out’? let the kids cut those in to fun shapes and glue them on!)
• Use what you have! Don’t go buy more craft supplies for this, look around for items
• Create woven placemats out of any old scraps of paper (if you scrapbook you probably have some fun scraps!), or even newspaper!
• Or create a woven ribbon placemat our of old ribbon (those pieces that are too small for wrapping presents with)
• Find some old vinyl placemats you’ll never use again – let the kids decorate those
• Go Thrifting! Find old vinyl placemats (like the ones with geese on them!) and let the kids cover them as they please

Editor’s Update:
Here is the final placemat we used (downloadable PDFs)