Newspaper fun

We get the Sunday newspaper at our house and one thing I have found is that newspaper is very theraputic and cheap. Here are a few ideas of how to deal with newspaper in a theraputic fun way that most kids enjoy.

• Have a snowball fight. Crumple up the newspaper into balls and throw it at one another. This is a wonderful alternative if you don't have snow or want to be warm in the winter but have some fun.
• Play sword fighting. This is probably more of a boy type of thing but my kids do have a fun time with it.
• Make newspaper dress up clothes. This can also be done out of paper grocery bags. If you're not sure how to do this it's pretty simple. Take a sheet of newspaper and you can use one of your child's shirts as an outline. Make sure it's bigger than the actual shirt because newspaper doesn't stretch. :) Use tape to 'sew' the pieces together if needed.
• Around holidays that presents are given have a bin for your child to shred newspaper in to use as filler.
• If you have a shredder or a child who likes to shred you can make a sensory box and fill it with newspaper. Hide some small toys in the paper and allow your child to play in it rather than sand, rice, flour, ect.
• Make a pinata it's messy and takes time to dry teaching your child patience.
• Fill a pillowcase up with crumbled up newspaper and allow your child to jump on it and roll around with it. It is squishy and you can determine how squishy you want it. It also makes noise.
• Make paper airplanes out of it.
• Make beads. Cut small strips and roll them around a pencil and then glue the end to secure. Allow to dry and then you can if you'd like put a sealant around it. This can be very colorful if you use the comic section of the paper.
• Take the comics and glue them to a Christmas ball. Some people only use one series of comics such as garfield. The best way to do it if you want to read the words is cut out the characters first and then put the words on the ball.
• There is a way you can use rolled up newspapers to make a structure. I'll have to see if I can find the link. Once I do I'll stick it in the pages in the How-to section.
• Stuff the newspapers in your clothing and pretend your a sumo wrester, a snowman or a fat clown.
• You can use the newspaper to make a puppet of several types. For an older child if you take a foam ball you can use a paste mixture and secure a small portion of a toliet paper tube into place. Keep adding layers and crumple up pieces give the face a nose, eyes, and a mouth if you wish. Measure cloth to put around the toliet paper tube. Give yourself extra room for sewing. Next trace around your child's hand and give it enough room to slide their hands in for a puppet plus seam allowances. I'll have to see if I can make one here soon as it'd be easy to do a photo tutorial rather than a paragrah.
• Roll up the newspaper into tubes to make a house. You can make this however big or little you wish and they can glue the papers together similar to lincoln logs.

Hope this page allows your creative juices to start flowing. :)