Six Spring Crafts for Seniors

By Anna Hazard

Introduction

With spring in the air (and touching wood for no more belated snow storms), it's time for senior loved ones to start getting a bit more exercise outside or bring a bit of the outside into the home with a few clever seasonal crafts. Here are a selection of tutorials for thematically relevant crafts that use inexpensive & easy-to-find materials and should be simple enough to perform for those with potential hand dexterity or strength issues.
 
For those seniors or others with a bit more prevalent hand issues, here is a handy guide to crafting tools that can help make the basics such as cutting, gluing, and painting far easier.

Tutorials

Birds Nest Decorations

• The return of the birds with their birdsong & hatching of new chicks is pretty synonymous with the coming of spring. Celebrate the oncoming season with these bird nest decorations that range in style from the realistic to the cartoony & cute. The commonly found materials include glue, string, and various paper sources (bags, plates, construction paper or whatever may be found at hand). Skill sets needed include cutting, pasting, and shaping papier-mâché, thus these crafts are suitable for those with very basic hand strength & dexterity.
• Alpha Mom | First Palette | Susie & Becky | Surviving a Teacher's Salary | Crafty Morning | No Time for Flash Cards

Spring Flowers

• The new growth of flowers in another theme readily linked to spring. If price, availability, or even pollen count makes having fresh flowers on hand too cumbersome, try these floral based crafts instead. Depending on the exact design (or what you may have exactly on hand), the basic supplies can vary widely from paper, drinking straws, pipe cleaners, paint, buttons, cork, plastic spoons, cups, crepe paper, coffee filters, food coloring, and even edible materials such as ice cream cones & cake mix. A bit of hand dexterity needed for gluing, cutting, taping, painting, stamping, twirling pipe cleaners, or mixing will be required.
• Clever Crafty Cookin' Mama | Happy Hooligans | Kid Friendly Things to Do | Lia Griffeth | Chica Circle | Pink Stripey Socks

Spring Vases

• Here are a sampling of tutorials for do-it-yourself spring themed vases to hold the decorative flower bouquets that your senior loved one has created (or for those freshly cut bouquets as well). Vases are pastel & colorful to suit the seasonal theme, but can be tweaked to better fit your own taste & decorating style.  As some tutorials use breakable materials as their bases (such as nail polish bottles or other empty glass jars & bottles), enough hand strength to handle them without fear of dropping will be required. The tin can vase can be substituted for those who can't reliably hold unto more fragile items.
• Creme de la Craft | The Sweetest Occasion | I Heart Nap Time | Green Wedding Shoes | Momtastic | Dwelling in Happiness

Butterfly Decorations

• When it comes to flower, butterflies are not far behind. Here are a selection of butterfly themed decorative crafts that can better complement the other flower based crafts in this article. While pre-made butterflies can be cheaply bought from hobby, art, and dollar stores, it may be more fun to craft paper butterflies from scratch either using a provided template or free-hand. Other supplies needed include empty plastic bottles or other extraneous plastic, free paint chip samples, any brightly colored fabric at hand, a wreath form or base, glue & paint, felt, pipe cleaners, branches, and old magazine pages. Enough basic hand dexterity to cut, paste, or paint using either normal or senior & arthritis friendly art tools will be required.
• Frumpy Bunny |  Sister's Suitcase Blog | Adventure in a Box | A Cultivated Nest | Rhythms of Play | DIY Green

Rain Chains & Rain Sticks

• In the spring, rain & flowers seem to go hand in hand. Rain Chains perform a similar function to gutter downspouts guiding rain water down to the ground. Unlike gutters, they tend to be highly ornamental and include a therapeutic sensory sound function with the play of water over their components. Here are a selection of do-it-yourself rain chain tutorials made from such common bases as zip ties, plastic bottles, plastic cups, and shower curtain hooks. These crafts require a bit more hand strength & dexterity than others included in this list or may require preparations in advance such as cutting bottles or drilling holes in cups.
• Those who find crafting rain chains as too strenuous can instead turn to Rain Sticks which will replicate the soothing sound of falling rain. These crafts are often used in therapeutic & stress reliefing sensory play for children, stressed adults, or in the use of dementia care. Materials used include cardboard tubes (such as toilet or paper towel rolls), plastic bottles, tape, beans, rice or other grains, or toothpicks with cutting, taping, and gluing the main skills necessary.
• Rain Chains: Dollar Store Crafts | Home Talk [1, 2] | Childhood List |  Greneaux Gardens |
• Rain Sticks: Golden Carers | Mum in the Madhouse | In Lieu of Preschool

Rainbow Sensory Toys

• After the rain comes the rainbows. Instead of focusing on rainbow decorative items, these selection of tutorials are for sensory toys that come in handy when it comes to hand therapy, stress relief, or dementia care. The whole gamut of home made sensory mixes is covered from slime to dough to sand, all of them brightly colored as a rainbow. Materials needed depend upon the exact recipe being used but include such common items as glue, food coloring or paint,  cornstarch or liquid starch, liquid soap, flour, or polystyrene beads. Mixing & making of these sensory blends can be done even by those with more severe hand dexterity or strength issues.
• Mom Dot (Slime) | Cute Life Hacks (Soap Fluff) | The Imagination Tree (Dough) | Growing a Jeweled Rose (Floam) | Happy Toy Time (Putty) | Mommy Hacks (Kinectic Sand)