I got some awesome Father’s Day card ideas on this page but I liked too much of them so I decided to make a special keepsakes box big enough to fit a lot of pages with lots of different messages. The kids had already made Dad special match boxes at a play group we attend so I thought I’d make it big enough to fit different kinds of objects. This project was so much fun and the kids loved it too!  

1. The Box

The box can be as big or small as you want it to be. I made mine letter size because I wanted to do all the crafts on letter size papers. I had some cardboard left over from a recent move so I cut a piece just big enough to cover the page and some more to give the box depth.

Take a ruler and bend the cardboard just a few millimeters away from the paper to give enough space for a stack of chunky papers stuck with crafty stuff. Mark one line of each blocks on the corners of the cardboard to make a fold-in tab where you will glue the base of the box together.

Cut the marked lines up to the folds, turn the base over and apply glue to all the corner blocks. I had a little excess cardboard that I had to cut off so I left the tab longer for extra glue-space but if yours was cut right the tabs should as short as the depth of the base.

Fold the corners in with the glued tabs on the inside and fix with pegs to assure they dry in place.

Use the base of the box to mark the lid. Leave a 1mm space on to ensure the lid fits the base with the tabs that will be folded in. Mark, cut, glue and peg it like you did with the base.

When the glue is dry you can play around with decorating the box. You can glue wrapping paper tightly on the whole box and add a ribbon or you can use pipe cleaners and pom-poms on top… I had a page lying around thats big enough to cover the lid so I painted the twins’ feet and let them each make a footprint. I let them decorate the white spaces with Mr. Price Chunky paint pens and wrote Pappa (Dad) on top.

Lastly I painted the base green to go with the green footprints and there we go! I nice keepsakes box big enough for a few art projects. Now to fill the box… All of the pages below can be made into a card by doing a smaller version of the craft on card stock on the right side of the page and folding the left part in. You can also use A3 instead of A4 to make space for bigger kiddie hands.

2. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

I let them paint noodles yellow and then drew the circle for them to color. I redid the circle as they drew everywhere except in the circle (yep only 2,5 years old cant expect them to get it right every time) and then I wrote the words, “Dad… you are my sunshine, my only sunshine!!!” after I made sure there was enough space for the noodles to go on to. Lastly I made glue blobs for them to stick the noodles on.

3. Where you go, I’ll go

Theres a song me and hubby both love, written by Chris Tomlin, called “‘I will follow”. Its written from the perspective of following God and of course we also want our children singing it for God but it works well for following dad as well.  “Where you go, I’ll go, where you stay, I’ll stay, where you move, I’ll move, I will follow you! See the video of the actual song here!

4. You’re Grrrrrrreat!/ Where you go, I’m part of the CREW!

This is written in Afrikaans and is translated to, “Dad, you’re GRRRRRRREAT!!”

Where you go, I am part of the CREW!

I just love the pirates… fingers and a small part of the palm is painted black and the rest of the palm yellow or brown depending on the skin color of the child. Let your toddler spread out their fingers (making sure they don’t touch anything else) and press firmly on the paper without moving the hand.

I made blobs of glue where they could put the eyes and drew in the rest with a permanent marker. For the hat, I put a blob of black paint on card stock for them to cover. Then I cut out the hat and drew the bones with white paint. After it dried I made a thin line of glue on the bottom of the hat so it can still stick out of the paper and helped them put it in place.

5. You’re Hands down the best/ You’re hand-some dad!

These ones speak for themselves… the second one reads, “You’re hand-some dad!”

6. Little Monsters stick together/ Dad’s little monsters

Little monsters stick together

Dads little monsters.

I had so much fun with the little monsters. With a little more time I’m sure you can get some pretty nice ones but time was limited and this is what we came up with. Use hands upside down, paint only two fingers with a hand or fingers only… Once again I made glue blobs for them to stick the eyes and this time I drew feet and clothes for them to color in. This time they thankfully didn’t draw over the whole page and stuck to coloring in 🙂

7. Butterfly kisses for girls/ Father and son poem for boys

I just love Bob Carlisle’s butterfly kisses. It makes my cry every time… I wrote a piece of it on top for my little girl and then I found a nice poem as if from a little boy to his dad and wrote a part of it at the bottom. The poem reads:

“Walk a little slower Daddy”

“Walk a little slower, Daddy!” said a little child so small.
“I’m following in your footsteps and i don’t want to fall.

Sometimes your steps are very fast, sometimes they’re hard to see;
So walk a little slower Daddy, for you are leading me.

Someday when I’m all grown up, you’re what i want to be.
Then i will have a little child who’ll want to follow me.

And i would want to lead just right, and know that i was true;
So, walk a little slower, Daddy, for i must follow you!!”

Author: unknown

8. Pipe cleaner bug-man

I had a few ice cream sticks, pipe cleaners and pom poms so I had the kids help me play with it until we came up with this bug-man-thing. They decided dad will like it so it went into the box!

9. Decorate a match box

We go to a moms and toddlers group every week and this happened to be one of the projects so we threw it in too. I would rather decorate the box with lots of different things like glitter glue and pom poms if I had older kids and more time but I decided to use it as we made it at the play group so therefore the finger prints once again.

Thats it folks. Lots of ideas to choose from and lots to do even with small toddlers! If you have older kiddo’s they can do much more on their own and the possibilities are endless.

Enjoy!

Also see my printable cards. Click on images below!