4 Kid-Friendly Yarn Crafts for All Ages

For any lover of yarn and knitting, you probably want to find exciting ways to pass on the passion you have for your creations with the young ones in your life. While not every kid might be ready to pick up a pair of knitting needles or a crochet hook, there are still plenty of ways to use yarn for crafts and creative outlets that engage the creative minds of children.

Yarnspirations, the online retailer you love for all of your yarn needs, is filled with fantastic yarn project ideas and tips, and you’ve probably got bits and bobs of yarn here and there from projects past to make some fun crafts. Or maybe you caught a good sale and found yourself with more yarn on your hands than you intended. When you’re looking to engage the little ones in some yarn creations, there are plenty of crafts and activities you can turn to. Here are eight kid-friendly yarn crafts that you can easily do at home.

1. God’s Eye

This craft is mess-free and can produce some really gorgeous results — it’s a real favourite among the crafty ones out there. After making a cross using two sticks, wind yarn around the four posts of the cross in various colours to create different coloured blocks within a diamond shape. The result looks a little bit like a small kite and once it’s done you might even want to add some decorative tassels to the ends of the sticks for some flair.

2. Rainbow Yarn Prints

Take an old rolling pin and wrap some yarn around it. Encourage the kids to lay down the yarn in interesting patterns — maybe that looks like evenly-spread out lines, crosses, or whatever their imagination can create. Roll the pin in different colours of paint and go ahead and roll on a canvas to create all sorts of different pattern and colour configurations.

3. Yarn Balls

This craft requires a few materials and some mess maintenance, but the results can be really gorgeous and well worth the effort. Using balloons, yarn, cooking spray, and glue, you can carry out this craft to create some hollow, yarn-spun decorative balls.

Just inflate the balloons to your desired size and after spraying them in cooking spray, wrap the yarn of your choice around the balloon using wet glue mixture. Hang them to dry and once the yarn has hardened from the glue, it’s time to pop the balloon and you have a lovely yarn ball that you can string up for a festive, fun look.

4. Yarn Monsters

You can use yarn along with some pipe cleaners and googly eyes to create tiny yarn friends. It’s super easy. Start off by bending a pipe cleaner in half and twisting it about 1/3 of the way down. Then wrap your yarn around 3-4 fingers to create a nice wodge of yarn around your hand and then slide one of the pipe cleaner legs through the wodge, twist, and snip through the loops of yarn so what you have looks like a tassel with two antennae sticking out the top. From there you can twist the legs into whatever shape you like, stick on some googly eyes, and you’ve got an adorable yarn monster. Crafts can be fun to do with kids and they’re also be a good way to create something out of yarn without the pressures of making something great from a knitting pattern. It’s a fun change of pace to make something just to try a new technique, so why not give one of these crafts a shot?