Sit Back and Relax While Your Kids Have a Blast With This PAW Patrol Craft

My 6-year-old twin boys have been fans of PAW Patrol — an exciting series about rescue dogs — since they were in diapers. They always pick PAW Patrol books for story time and own every character in toy form, complete with vehicles (thanks, Grandma!). If I call them “Chickaletta,” a pet chicken in the series, they fall over themselves giggling.

And when they’re not keeping up with the PAW Patrol gang, they’re all about crafting. Because of that, I’m always looking for low-mess and low-stress ways to channel that creative spirit without having to clean up piles of glitter and glue afterwards.

So when Scholastic asked if I wanted to check out Klutz Jr.: My PAW Patrol Pom-Pom Pups, I said yes, positive that combining two of their favorite things would win me some serious “cool mom” points. As suspected, my kids were pumped when they saw the activity I had planned. Read on for my full review and shapshots of our experience! 

As much as I like making things with my kids, I’m not a super crafty mom. That’s one reason I’m a fan of Klutz craft kits — the supplies are included, making it easier to get to the fun part of crafty time together. And this kit is designed for independent play for kids ages 4 to 8! We opened the My PAW Patrol Pom-Pom Pups kit and were ready to start creating within minutes.

The kit is themed around a story about the PAW Patrol pups going camping. It even comes with little pop-out tents and a fireplace for the finished pups to pose next to. I was pleasantly surprised that the instruction manual kicks off with an illustrated story about their camping adventures. My kids asked to read it together before we started the craft, and loved how the story and kit worked together. Bolded sight word phrases encourage kids to read along throughout the text, making it a great bridge between board books and early readers.

So often with kids’ craft kits, the instructions are clearly designed for adults only. They’re on plain white paper, in tiny text, and usually have few to no pictures to help us out. This kit is awesome because it really is designed with kids in mind. It’s fully illustrated with easy-to-follow steps, making it simple for kids to do most, if not all, of the craft themselves. There’s even a chart in the back of the book where kids can earn sticker rewards for completing steps like finishing a character, following the directions, or reading the story that comes with the book.

After reading through the instructions (and earning a reward sticker!), we got started. I let the kids organize all the supplies from the box that we needed, and Jeremy happily said, “It’s like a puzzle,” as he gathered pom poms.

The pom-pom pups are super cute, and surprisingly easy to put together — no craft fails here! In fact, my kids were the ones who figured out that the dogs’ collars need to be folded down before gluing on the neck, and were quick to point out that Mommy was the one to get it wrong at first.

Picking out the right pom poms and gluing on the ears and faces is a sneaky way of helping to hone color recognition and spatial awareness skills, and the fluffy pom-poms make it a forgiving craft — the ears don’t have to be perfectly straight and the neck doesn’t have to be perfectly centered for everything to stick. It’s pretty impossible for these not to turn out looking adorable.

I’ve shelled out for more expensive craft kits (this one is only $16.99!), just to have my kids be done in less than 20 minutes and then fight over the single craft we made. Because this My PAW Patrol Pom-Pom Pals comes with a storybook, stickers, craft supplies for seven characters, and play pieces, it was perfect for my two kids to share and kept them busy the whole afternoon. The pup campsite is still in my living room, and I’m under strict instructions not to take it down.  

With two determined kids, we made all of the characters in a couple hours, but this could also be a fun project to do if you’re crafting one at a time over a few weeks.

Between the book, the craft, and the blissfully quiet and independent playtime the boys had afterwards with their new fluffy friends, I ended the night feeling like Super-Mom. They flexed their reading muscles and practiced important skills like following directions, color recognition, and fine motor control under the guise of creating something they loved and could play with. They even cleaned up after themselves by tucking all of the excess cardboard right back into the box.

They’ve already said they can’t wait until we do our next Klutz kit — and to be honest, neither can I.