Tutorial: I Can See Clearly Now The Rain Is Gone - Simple "Stained Glass" Window Craft for Kids & Toddlers

I’m sharing a classic activity with y’all today. I needed a quick and easy activity to keep the boys busy for awhile. So, I pulled out the tissue paper squares and the Clear Adhesive Paper and told Froot Loop we were making a stained glass window! 

This is one of the simplest activities, and it’s great for developing art skills, fine motor skills, color blending, and so much more. 

Start with some tissue paper squares like THESE. I actually found mine at a dollar store. 

Then get out your trusty Clear Contact Paper. You can choose any size you wish, but the clear works best for this activity. 

Tape the corners of your contact paper (sticky side up/out-don’t accidentally stick it to the surface!) to a window or a glass door so you can see through it. 

Let your kiddos place tissue paper squares all over the contact paper. Let them experiment with scrunching them or folding them or just slapping them all over the paper. 

If the squares overlap, use it as an opportunity to talk about color blending. Froot Loop was completely fascinated by this. 

Cocoa Puff had a hard time with this activity, but he was perfectly happy picking up the tissue paper squares and running around like a madman with them, so I still call it a success. I did manage to get him to put a few squares on the sticky paper. He then freaked out for a second and tried to get them off. After a couple times of doing this, he finally realized what was going on and stopped freaking out after putting the squares on the paper. He still much preferred to grab the tissue paper and scream like a banshee. 

Froot Loop had a blast with this project. He loves stickers and art and things like that and after a few minutes of “pushing” him to start a new thing, he gets the hang of it and wants to keep doing it himself. 

I love the finished product. The boys were very proud of it and I left it up on the door because it’s really cool! It looks like stained glass! We’ve gotten several compliments on it, too. 

What’s your go-to “keep ‘em busy for 15 minutes” activity?