Alex Tissue Art: Versatile Easy Kids Craft

I have a licensed daycare in my home, and currently am caring for seven school aged children ages 5-12. If I would let them, most would be content to watch TV and play video games after school, but that isn't healthy. I searched around on the internet for some quick and easy crafts that would appeal to a wide range of ages, and ended up buying a Tissue Art Kit made by ALEX Little Hands.

Contents

The kit contains six self-stick patterns: a star, flower, car, butterfly, fish, and parrot. The patterns are quite large, the fish is 10" long by 7" wide. Also included are a generous supply of rainbow colored tissue paper squares. There are 800 pieces of tissue, measuring 2 7/8" by 2 7/8". Last there are four large wiggly eyes.

How To Use

The patterns are very sticky underneath, with peel off sections of paper. The fish, for example, has separate sections for the eyes, top and side fins, tail, and body. The body is broken into four sections, so it's very easy for the kids to make their masterpieces very colorful. The work is already done for them, all the kids need do is peel back the yellow paper to reveal a sticky section, scrunch up the tissue paper into a ball, and stick it down. Once a section has been filled in with a certain color of tissue balls, they move on to the next section, peel and stick. They continue like this until the entire picture is filled up. There is no glue needed, and very little mess to clean up. All that you need to do is throw away the paper strips that have been peeled off.

Thoughts

This ALEX Little Hands tissue art kit is appropriate for children ages 2 and up. I have watched kids as young as three (our neighbor) and as old as 12 make the projects. All of my daycare kids, boys and girls alike, love this craft project! They are so proud of their art work, and usually take it home for their Moms and Dads to display on their fridge.

For children under the age of five, they will most likely need some supervision. I find that they tend to wad the paper up way too tightly, and don't fill in all of the spaces, leaving white spots all over their picture. They are indeed capable of doing the craft, but they need some gentle guidance.