Friendship Art Projects for Two Year Olds

Many young children make friends easily, including striking up conversations with perfect strangers in the grocery line. Friendship art projects celebrate the connections friends share, and can also help patch up small squabbles between friends the tikes may have. Two-year-olds enjoy simple art projects and will help you display their creativity for friends and family.

Holding hands is common among young friends. Your toddler can work with friends to create a friendship mural using hand prints, drawing from two options to complete this project. She can trace around her hand on a sheet of construction paper and you can cut out the hand print so she can glue it on a large piece of butcher paper. Or, she can dip her hands in finger paint and press her hand on the butcher paper. Place the hand prints close enough for fingers to touch or connect each hand print to others with colored yarn to connect them. You might write the child’s name over the hand print or glue the child’s picture above the hand print.

The world would be a nicer and safer place if everyone was friendly. Your 2-year-old can help remind himself and others to be friendly. Glue or print a picture of the Earth on a sheet of paper. Have him glue small people-shaped cut-outs or attach smiling faces or hearts around the Earth.

Friends often change as children grow, especially in a mobile society. A friendship collage can preserve some of those connections as your 2-year-old grows. Have your toddler glue her face in the center of a decorative sheet of scrapbook paper. Give her small face pictures of friends and family to add to the collage. She can glue them around her face and draw lines from each picture to her own. Write the names of the friends on the line to preserve them and cover the page with clear contact paper.

Paper chains are simple art projects 2-year-olds can create and use to decorate a room. Your toddler can decorate strips of paper with crayons or stickers. Have him wipe a glue stick across one end of the strip and connect the strip into the paper chain. He can name a friend for each loop in his friendship paper chain.

A group of 2-year-olds can weave a friendship web out of yarn. Cut 12- to 14-foot lengths of yarn in various colors. Tape one end of each yarn length to a pole or dowel. Each toddler takes the other end of one of the yarn pieces and begins to walk around the pole, weaving in and around her friends until the yarn is completely wrapped around the pole. Tape the ends of the wrapped yarn pieces to the pole. The colors remind the child how bright and colorful her world is because of the friendships.