Digital Photo Projects for Kids

Most children love to take pictures, but what about after? You can turn all those pictures they have taken into unique photo projects that they will enjoy for years to come. Kids tend to take numerous photos of the same subject over and over. If you notice your child doing this, here are some things to try:

Have a photo scavenger hunt. This can be done at a birthday, or just for fun. It can be quite fun for your child to participate in a photo scavenger hunt with their friends. Have all the kids take pictures of random subjects and tell them to combine weird, unusual and other angles. Whoever can come back from the scavenger hunt with the most unique photograph will win.

Does your child take photo after photo?

Make a photo jigsaw puzzle. By taking your child’s digital pictures and turning them into a jigsaw puzzle, you are giving them the opportunity to show off their work to family and friends. A jigsaw puzzle becomes a game the whole family can play! You can make a photo jigsaw puzzle yourself by gluing a photograph to a piece of cardboard and then carefully cut it into curved pieces. If you do not want to make a photo cardboard puzzle yourself, you can upload your picture to a number of online photo web sites that will make one for you. Many digital cameras also come with software that allows the user to make a puzzle on the computer.

Your child can make a photo journal or scrapbook with their digital images. Your entire family can be involved in the photo journal. Have each member of your family pick a day of the week to take pictures of anything that is interesting or anything that defined their day. When the camera comes home at the end of the day, have the family member transfer the pictures onto the computer and organize the pictures into a journal with captions for each picture. These journals can be kept on your computer or you can print them into a homemade book.

Play around with the colors of the pictures with photo-editing software. Most computers come installed with some version of Microsoft Paint. In Microsoft Paint you can edit photos, but it will be very basic. There are other programs you can download that will allow you to play around with your photos on a wide variety. One particular program is called Paint.Net, this program supports multiple layers with transparency, painting and selection tools, red-eye removal, oil painting, and also allows for special effects like motion blur. Paint.Net is free and provides many extra options compared to Microsoft Paint.

Create a photo t-shirt. You can purchase iron-on photo transfer paper and print your photos directly onto it. From here you will need to purchase a lighter colored t-shirt (darker t-shirts often don’t work well with transfers, but you can find dark transfer paper at some stores.). Now you will print the photo onto the transfer paper and iron it onto the t-shirt. Your child now has a t-shirt with a picture on it that they took!

A fun gift to give to the grandparents is a photo calendar. Have your child use their digital camera to take a bunch of pictures of their grandparents or take pictures of things they think their grandparents would like. You can print out the pictures and make a calendar with them, but this will take awhile as you have to get twelve 11 x 17 pieces of paper and write or print the yearly calendar information on the bottom and then glue the pictures to the top of each page. An easier way to make a digital photo calendar is to upload your pictures to a photo web site like Kodak.com. You will simply pick a design template and upload all your photos to the page and arrange them. Once you have completed your camera, you will just need to order the calendar and wait for it to be delivered.