8 Crafts To Preserve Your Child’s Handprints & Footprints

As parents, we have our days when we can’t wait until our children are old enough to take care of themselves and not need to depend on us for so much. However, there is also that big part in our hearts that wants them to stay little for as long as possible. These 8 hand print crafts will help to preserve those memories of their younger days and how small they really were. Who knows, maybe one of these would make a great Mother’s Day gift as well (hint, hint)! All of these kids craft projects use handprints.

Looking for more Handprint crafts? Check out these Handprint articles we wrote previously. You may want to purchase a ready-made kit for a handprint keepsake too.

1- Handprint Apron from Little Page Turners

2- Love You Hand Prints from Lil Luna

3- Sunshine Keepsake Print from The Realistic Mama

4- Salt Dough Footprint Heart from Hub Pages

5- Thumbprint Family Tree from Day 2 Day Supermom

6- Handprint Bouquet from Wallfry

7- Hand Shaped Ring Dish from Mama Papa Bubba

8- Handprint Cupckae Card from I Heart Arts N Crafts

Looking for more salt dough projects? check these salt dough crafts out on our sister site Craftbits.com

If you are looking for an airdrying clay as an alternative I highly recommend Das Airdrying white clay I have been using it for over 30 years and it never fails me.

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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