Crafts to Make with Paper Bags

There are so many fun crafts you can make with paper bags, which is a good thing because paper lunch bags come in a huge pack so if you’re not using them for lunches you’ll hang onto them forever (ask me how I know). Check out these fun crafts to make with paper bags.

Of course there are tons of options when it comes to making paper bag puppets out of lunch sized paper bags. Kids will have fun designing their own if you give them construction paper, markers, feathers, googly eyes, etc., but you can also make particular animals if you like.

To name just a few:

Dragon (Moms and Crafters) includes a free template
Octopus (Kids Activities Blog) also uses newspaper for bonus upcycling
Cow (Simple Everyday Mom) includes a free template
Sea otter (Buggy and Buddy) includes a free template
Squirrel (Crafts by Amanda) includes a free template
Butterfly (I Heart Crafty Things) you could use coffee filters if you don’t have doilies for the wings
Turkey (Journey to SAHM) a classic
Owl (Kids Activity Zone)
Platypus (Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool+) this post includes other Australian animal crafts and picture books to read if you’re doing an Australia unit

I also have a small paper bag journal over on my blog that kids and adults alike can use. These are fun to make for treasure hunts or use as a travel journal for your next vacation since the pockets can hold little treasures.

Use a bigger bag to make a pretend play satchel and treasure map like this one from Buggy and Buddy. That would be another fun way to do a treasure hunt in the house or yard, or let the kids draw their own maps as they explore.

And if your kiddo is always bringing you flowers from the yard, you can make a paper bag display to hold plain glass or mason jar vases like this one from Cleverly Inspired. Hers has a red, white and blue theme but kids could decorate them in all sorts of ways.

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

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