Amazon are offering 20% off a Great Gizmos ‘Create Your Own’ Plate Design kit, which they’re selling for £4.79 instead of £5.99, saving you £1.20.

• Eat off your own handiwork

These plates are a great idea. My daughter will happily eat off the plate that we made at the ceramics café a few months back, and the mugs we made for my parents with the two children’s hand and foot prints were well accepted and are apparently loved – in the way only a grandparent can.

This set comes with 6 markers and a white plate. The child can design their plate, leave the ink to try for a minute and just like that, it’s permanent, so long as you don’t put it through the dishwasher – but normal washing is fine.

The pens can’t be used on normal ceramic, says one reviewer, but can be used on paper once the plate is done.  It’s a child sized plate rather than normal dinner plate sized and it seems the kids in general love it – and the parents love that it’s pretty mess free.

Play.com have another Great Gizmos gizmo on sale: a Make Your Own Mini Scrapbook kit, selling for £5.99 instead of £9.99.

• Record your Easter holiday memories

This Great Gizmos Make Your Own Mini Scrapbook kit allows you to create a scrapbook with 24 full colour pages. There are more than 180 little templates to personalise your pages to your heart’s content.

The kit includes a front and back cover, 12 sheets of printed inner paper, six sheets of patterned templates, 12 sheets of colourful printed paper, a sheet of alphabet stickers and glue.

While they say that it’s suitable for children over eight years of age (although the features page says five and over!), I guess it’s really more dependent on the child, and the end result you’re hoping for, but they do say not suitable for under 36 months due to swallowable bits, I suppose.

An ideal rainy day activity for an older child, or a nice way to commemorate a special time together.

Easter holidays are perfect for arts and crafts, especially when the weather’s so crummy after a perfect few weeks! Amazon have a few arty crafty goods on sale at the moment, and one of those is a Make A Princess Mirror from Great Gizmos, selling at £3.49, reduced by 42% from £5.99, and including delivery.

• Make a princess mirror with your princess

The reviews for this item are actually more informative than the description itself, but apparently this is more of a dolls item than a child’s and produces quite a small mirror – around 13cm.  Even so, it’s a nice, creative thing to do. The set comes with a rubber mould and with plaster which you use to create the mirror.

After a good 24 hours of drying time, the reviewers recommend, you can start decorating it with the paints provided. That said, it’s not the best quality of paint, and will stain, and will not wash out of clothes, sofas and carpets.  You’re better off getting your own child-friendly paint to use.

The set also comes with sparkles and glitter, and while they say it’ll be ‘hours of fun’, I’m not sure there’ll be that many hours, but it should still be fun.

Thanks to dudebar

Amazon have 56% off the Ride On Zebra from Great Gizmos, saving you £30.90.  I can’t find these elsewhere, actually, other than eBay which currently has them for almost £58 including delivery.

• Ride along with a Great Gizmo Zebra

There’s so little information on this Zebra, but I think it’s pretty cute! Apparently it is made from tough steel and features a solid wooden head and wooden tail and has four durable steel wheels with rubber tyre for added grip.

It’s quite solid too, and sturdy according to the only Amazon reviewer.  At 2.5kg, I’m not surprised as that’s quite heavy!

It’s suitable for kids 12 months and up and should last for a very long time and be great to hand down from one child to the next – especially since it is totally unisex.

There’s a little bit of self-assembly required with the handles and wheels that need to be put on, but it shouldn’t take too much effort to do.

Thanks to wishihadadonkey @ HUKD

There are special offers from Great Gizmos at Amazon at the moment, and I’ll tell you a little about them here. Unless it says otherwise, they’re suitable from age 8 upwards.

• Science Museum Finger Print Kit £6.90 from £10.99

With this kit you can collect and record fingerprints and examine the prints to look for suspects. You can record important clues and make your case.

• Green Science Potato Clock £5.99 instead of £10.99

Power a digital clock using only a potato? Apparently so, with this kit, using wireds, copper and zinc strips, transparent tape ad more.

• Mermaid Doll Making Kit is down to £5.69

This 22cm doll comes with all the trimmings you need to decorate and ‘make’ your own soft toy. She requires no pins or needles and is easy to make for kids ages 5 and up.

• Intruder Alarm is reduced to £5.99

Building an alarm to fit your bedroom door, you’ll learn the science of connecting electric circuits while protecting your property from spies and intruders.

There’s loads more to see, so have a look at Great Gizmos on Amazon.

Thanks to wishihadadonkey at HUKD

There's a Great Gizmos Crochet Art set on offer at Amazon for £5.29, instead of £9.99.

• Rediscover the art of crochet

I say 'rediscover' but I've never actually done any crocheting, despite home economy classes where we did all sorts of things I don't think I've ever used – like the thing where you tie sting in knots to decorate pillows? Can't even remember what it's called!

Anyway, my lack of sewing ability aside, the arts of knitting, sewing and crocheting seem to have found a revival recently, and this Crochet Art kit will be a good way of introducing it to a willing participant. The kit gives you an achievable project – you can crochet a coaster, handbag, place mat or belt – and includes the all important 14-page instruction book. It has lots of brightly coloured wool and is suitable for children over 8 years of age.

The reviews are positive, with one lady saying it gave her 9 year old niece sufficient skills to move on to adult patterns and another saying that it is an excellent buy for a beginner or child. Criticism involved the hook, with reviewers saying that it was bulky and clumsy to use, but nothing that couldn't be worked around.

It would probably make a lovely stocking filler, and it is a good price!

Thanks to hashman at HUKD

With the weather looking promising this is a great little project for those of you with slightly older kids

• Click HERE and keep your cool with Amazon

Toys for toys' sake are fab but  'toys' that you can build yourself, that work at the end AND have a practical use were, and still are, a big hit with all of my kids.

So the big kids are too old for this and the 'baby' would be too young if I paid attention to the 8 years upwards advice for this Desk Fan kit, but you know...I reckon he'd LOVE it and I'm not about to give him the box and just let him loose with it on his own; sensible parental judgement must sometimes prevail in my opinion.

So this Great Gizmos PowerCircuits desk fan kit comes with all sorts of bits and pieces to be put together before it works.  The kit comes with a sturdy pre-cut base, pre-wired motor, battery holder, self-assembly switch and foam propeller.

You'll need to assemble a simple electronic circuit board and piece the other bits together and in the process your child will learn all about basic electronic circuits and how it can be converted into energy.

I love things like this and your child will be blown away (hur hur) by their fab electronic engineering skills when they flick that switch for the first time and their fan whirs in to life!

Amazon have cut the price on this from £10 to £3.80 and if you're in no rush for delivery that's free with the SuperSaver deal.

Happy keeping cool!

Thanks to MikeT over at HUKD!