Felt Boards: Quick, Portable, Do-It-Yourself Fun

If your family includes a preschooler and people who aren’t preschoolers (such as yourself!), it can be challenging to find a family art activity that can equally engage the skills and creativity of each family member.

In my family, which includes two people who are preschoolers and two people who aren’t, one of our favorite family art activities is to make more creations for our little girls’ felt board. Felt is easy to cut, holds its shape well and doesn’t ravel, can be drawn on with permanent markers and glued with hot glue, and, if you work with wool felt or an acrylic felt made from recycled plastic bottles, it’s an eco-friendly craft material, as well.

Simple fun.

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If you don’t already have a felt board, you can easily make one yourself by simply tacking a large piece of felt to a wall, or covering a large panel with felt (the option we took in our house), or framing the felt in a large picture or poster frame with the front glass removed. For a portable option, just cut out a very large piece of felt, play with it on the floor, and roll it up when you’re finished. My favorite is the vertical felt board, however, because it’s so cool how felt sticks to felt, I think.

When we choose to make more felt board objects for our family art night, I tend to make mostly math manipulatives, squares and rectangles of a defined length and width, circles and other geometrical shapes.

Willow, who is four, can draw her own pictures in permanent marker on the felt and cut around them, which is a good hand-strengthening activity for writing preparedness, since felt is thicker than paper.

Sydney, who is two, usually masterminds my partner’s creation of various more elaborate felt objects, and my partner can challenge his own very substantial artistic skills by working with a novel medium. He’s a graphic designer, and occasionally he has to get tired of going click-click-click with that little mouse all day.

We find it nice to engage in a family activity in which each member of the family can work at her own level and be challenged to create. Other ideas? Trace around cookie cutters. Cut out an alphabet. Find templates online to trace. Create a felt avatar for every member of your family.

Or, just hang out with the kids and play.

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