There are so many different  paper craft ideas that you see on the web which are often complicated and copycat crafts. I am going to give you 5 very easy, non complicated yet, creative paper arts and crafts you can do with children of many ages.

Before even beginning to tell you about the projects know that these projects can all be done with simple Construction Paper
Construction paper is probably one of the most widely used materials for art projects with young children. It is inexpensive, plentiful and comes in a wide variety of colors.Of course, you can do these paper crafts for children with other types of paper but, construction paper is the type of paper that you most likely have available.

I want to make you aware about the various activities that can be done with construction paper before launching into the activities themselves.

Before beginning construction paper crafts for kids

Construction paper can be torn, cut, glued, folded, slit, scored, chained, punched, pricked, curled, pleated and fringed.

1-Torn paper collage: (seen in image above)

To begin you give the children 2 different colored pieces of construction paper to choose from. They should be instructed to use one of the papers for a background and the other to rip. Show the young ones how to rip or tear the paper into any size piece.

The children’s first torn paper collages will be quite random and abstract looking. As they grow and mature you will see them starting to consciously tear the pieces of paper into recognizable shapes. There is a lot of variety you can  add to these torn paper collages.

For a winter scene you can give the children black paper as a background and white paper to tear. As they get more proficient you can give them more colors to use to tear for their pictures. You can also add other items for them to use along with their ripped papers like I did with the pictures below.

I added feathers for the children to use along with their torn papers which made them think of different ways to use the torn paper. At another point I used googly eyes which made them to even different things as well.

I have a post specifically geared towards torn paper art, where you can get more ideas.I also  have one specifically for torn paper animal art.

2- Paper mosaics

For this activity you will need to prepare many small squares of construction paper. You can cut them out of long strips of paper, you can use a paper cutter or you can even have the children if they are old enough help you cut these small squares.

Have the children draw a picture on a different piece of construction paper. Then have the children fill in their entire picture using the small pieces of paper. You may want to show them pictures of other mosaics to give them an idea of what a mosaic looks like.

Even though I would never push kids to color in the lines, with mosaics you may want to encourage the children to glue their pieces in the lines of their pictures.

I found this lovely mosaic on the blog Apex Elementary art where they use mosaics to make paper mosaic flower pots for mothers day

3-Snowflake like decorations

This activity is more of a cutting activity and I call it a snowflake like decoration as the process-is similar to that one of making the classic paper snowflakes.

The idea here is to fold a piece of paper and have the children snipping away on the folds. They can keep folding the paper in different places and then making different cuts along the folds. When they open up the paper there will be holes with designs all over the paper.

You then take a contrasting or complementary piece of construction paper and paste this decoration on it. that color will show through all the holes the children have snipped.

Check out these beautiful coffee filter snowflakes from the blog Art is basic

4-Hole puncher art

A really simple kids paper craft is to allow the children to punch holes in strips of paper (I use strips because they cannot reach the middle of a large paper with a hole puncher).

You can use the various types of hole punchers that are around or the standard round one.

Once they finish punching all the holes they want, have them collage with those tiny pieces onto another sheet of paper.In the activity above from hole punch art, I also gave them reinforcements to add to their pictures.

5-Mirror image paper cuts

This activity may be a bit difficult for the very young ones. Take a piece of construction paper and fold it in half. Right near the fold have the children draw a shape or a picture. Then give them scissors and let them cut it out leaving the paper folded. What they will find when they cut it out is a perfectly symmetrical shape of whatever it is they drew.

I also found this wonderful negative space cutouts idea from Make and Takes that is more for children that are not so young but, its a great paper craft idea.

Paper crafts  very low cost and easy to do with kids of many ages. I hope you can use and implement some of the ideas I gave you here.

Also check  out the various collages I have on this blog as they use lots of paper.

Any interesting ideas that you have found with paper?