3. Whimsical Animal Bookmark Buddies
Encourage a lifelong love of reading in your children by helping them create their own whimsical animal bookmarks. This incredibly simple, low-mess craft requires minimal preparation and is perfect for large groups, birthday parties, or classroom activities. To get started, gather a package of wide tongue depressor-style wooden sticks, colorful felt sheets, googly eyes, fine-tip permanent markers, and craft glue. Because the sticks serve as the body of the animal, kids can easily transform them into frogs, foxes, tigers, cats, or mythical creatures like unicorns.
To make a clever fox bookmark, paint the top half of a wide wooden stick orange and the bottom half white. Cut out two small orange triangles from the felt to serve as ears, and glue them to the top of the stick. Glue two wiggle eyes just below the ears, and use a black permanent marker to draw a cute button nose, a smiling mouth, and whiskers. If your child prefers a green frog, paint the entire stick green, glue oversized googly eyes to the very top, and cut out webbed feet from green construction paper to attach to the bottom. These delightful little characters sit snugly between the pages of a book, making reading time feel like a fun, interactive game.