Rainy Day Arts & Crafts for kids
Paper, glue, paint, and recycled-material projects with a finished thing to keep.
Part of Rainy Day activities and all arts & crafts.
- Ages 3–520 min
Torn Paper Collage Animal Portrait
Tear colored paper into pieces and glue them to make an animal face.
Light adult help · Low mess · Printable step card
- Ages 5–840 min
Handprint Wrapping Paper and Gift Tags
Paint your child's hand to print patterns on plain paper, then cut tags from leftovers.
Light adult help · Low mess · Printable step card
- Ages 8–1040 min
Layered Silhouette Cityscape Card
Cut and layer paper silhouettes to build a three-dimensional cityscape greeting card.
Kids can run it · Low mess · Printable step card
Rainy Day Arts & Crafts at home
When the rain has been going since breakfast and the usual options are not working, a craft that ends with a real finished object does something a worksheet or a screen cannot — it gives the afternoon a shape. These three projects all use materials you already have, none of them need a second adult, and each one produces something the child can hold at the end. The mess is low across all three, which matters when you are already inside with nowhere to spread out. Pick the one that fits who you are sitting with today and what they actually need right now.
What is in this set
The three rainy Day Arts & Crafts activities here run from 20 to 40 minutes — Torn Paper Collage Animal Portrait is the quickest, Handprint Wrapping Paper and Gift Tags the longest. Between them they cover ages 3–5, ages 5–8 and ages 8–10, and each card below says which. One can be run by the kids once set up; the rest want an adult nearby.
Choosing one
For a child aged 3 to 5 who needs something immediate and forgiving, start with the Torn Paper Collage Animal Portrait — no scissors required and the tearing itself burns energy. For ages 5 to 8 with a gift-giving occasion coming up or just a need to make something useful, the Handprint Wrapping Paper and Gift Tags is the natural choice. For ages 8 to 10 who can sit and work with focus, the Layered Silhouette Cityscape Card rewards patience and ends with something genuinely impressive.
Before you start
For all three, protect the table before you call the child over — a kitchen towel or a few sheets of newspaper takes thirty seconds and saves cleanup later. For the collage and the handprint project, pre-cut or pre-tear a starting set of materials so there is something to pick up immediately. For the cityscape card, sharpen a pencil and have a ruler out. The thing that goes wrong most often across all three is running out of a key material mid-project, so check you have enough paper before you begin.
More rainy day activities
The other formats available for this theme.