Doing crafts with toddlers is probably a lot different than doing crafts with preschools and of course older children, because you have to remember that toddlers have very short attention spans. If you don't remember that, you might fee like you're wasting time doing crafts with them. However, if you keep that in mind, you can be creative in involving them in crafts, plus, at this age, you get to help them a lot with their crafts, which I personally love, because (1), I love to do crafts, and (2), it fun to be a partner with my toddler.
In this activity, I explained to my toddler what we're going to do: "mommy is going to cut out a pumpkin, and you get to put eyes, nose, and a mouth on it to make a Jack-O-Lantern. It's a good idea to read several books about Halloween and pumpkins if you kiddo is young and doesn't really know what Jack-O-Lanterns are yet, but it's not a requirement; you can always just talk about it too.
After I cut out the pumpkin, and he fully inspected it, he watched me cut out the eyes, nose, and mouth. He of course wanted to try the scissors, which I let him try and explained their use and that they were very sharp, but which he wasn't able to use yet, so he lost interest pretty quickly.
What he was very interested in was playing with the eyes, nose, and mouth. He inspected each one; we talked about where they are on our own bodies and where they go on the pumpkin; and I encouraged him to play with them and have fun deciding where he would like them to go.
Toddlers seem to be very tactile, so he played for a while mainly touching and looking at the shapes (like two minutes). We talked about shapes, and then I asked him if he was ready to glue them down, so that they will stick in place, and he was excited. Before doing so, I helped him move them into a more realistic place while again talking about where eyes, nose, and mouth go (remember, at this age, you get to help, so feel free to jump in; they seem to love it), and then I told him about glue...
As you can see above, he was so excited when I asked him to press everything down hard, so that they would stick. Then we talked about what a stem is while I cut one out, and again, amazement.
Finally, I asked if he'd like to color the pumpkin with markers, and he loves to color, so that was a great final step.
We hung the pumpkin in the window, and it was a great decoration. Later we added our homemade ghosts, which I share about in another post.
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