I didn't want to go out and buy a whole lot of stuff for Easter themed crafts. In particular, as we weren't doing anything like having an Easter bonnet parade (my son did that at school) I didn't want to have to buy a hat that he's never going to wear. Instead, I had some paper bags, and plates, to use as the base, and I bought some little chicks and Easter themed confetti (£1 each at the 99p store) and we used items that we had already in the craft cupboard at home.
As children go into Year 1 they start to learn about the various countries in the world. Flags and countries go together. It is difficult to explain the concept of a flag and what it is for without also talking about what a country is.
Trying to explain that yes, we live in England and that is a country but we also live in the United Kingdom is a whole other conversation. And if anyone has any tips to actually get that concept across to a six year old, I'll be very grateful.
This project is fun, and it also ties in with the national curriculum. So a winner all round! My son got a book on flags, so we decided to spend an afternoon making some.
For this you will need:
To make the flags, we folded the sheets of A4 in half, and stuck them together to make them a bit stiff. After I had cut the pointy bits off the bamboo skewers, we taped them to the edge of the paper flags.
My son and his friend chose their favourite countries, which were Egypt and New Zealand, and they also made a flag up of their own. It was a great opportunity to look at the flag of a country, and talk about what makes it up and what each element is meant to represent.
The New Zealand flag, for example, has the Union Jack on the top left hand corner. The boys were curious as to why a country would have another country's flag on their own flag. And that opened up another topic of conversation.
Our British colonial past came up again when we discussed the Egyptian flag. The red stripe at the top represents the time before the Revolution, when the country was ruled by a monarchy and British occupation. With the black band at the bottom representing the oppression felt by the people of Egypt under that system of governship.
The boys were particularly impressed with the golden Eagle of Saladin.
Incidentally, if you're thinking that Egypt might be a strange choice, the boys' school has an ancient Egyptian theme to it, with a sarcophagus in the foyer of the school office, large silver Egyptian cats either side of the stage in the hall, and other artifacts dotted about.
It is amazing how inventive you have to get when faced with more than a week of solid rain during the school holidays. This project was inspired by the Science Museum. In the hands on zone they have for kids, there are some powerful magnets to play with. These are covered in round metal discs, and my son spent ages playing with them, making all sorts of magnetic sculptures.
At home he got some of his magnet sets out and used them to make dinosaur sculptures.
Click here to read more...
Last week, I had a fabulous day at the London Transport Museum with my son. They're running workshops in the learning centre every day during the holidays. On this particular day the theme was to do with the water. Children could make a boat or a bridge.
The only requirement was that the boat had to float down the river they had built in the room, and the bridge had to be able to carry the weight of a toy black cab.
We had a huge amount of fun making a boat. My son decided he wanted to make a pirate ship. He picked out all the materials, and came up with the design, and we built it together. This project took about an hour to complete, and the end result is fabulous. And bath friendly.
If I can do this trust me, ANYONE can!
For this project you will need:
First, we used a piece of corrugated plastic to fix the masts. You could use something else as thick, or blue-tac. I had a hole punch that made holes the same size as the wood dowling. Or you could just use scissors. We put a strip of sticky tape underneath the plastic, so the sticky part was under the holes. Then I taped it into the centre of the boat.
Next I cut the wooden stick into three pieces of different lengths. You could use straws for this as well. Four square pieces of material went on to the masts at different heights to make the sails. These went into the holes, and I secured them with sticky tape.
We measured out two lengths of wool to go from the top of a mast to the side. I taped these to the top of the mast (as before, this was too tricky for my son's hands to manage) and to the sides. Plus one long strip of sticky tape along the side. I found that the tape peeled quite easily, so I used a pipe cleaner along the side that I secured by pushing the rim over it, as well as a little bit of sticky tape.
If you've a glue gun you won't need to do any of this.
The bowspirit is made of two lollipop sticks. To balance the ship, we made a little 'deck' of two lots of three lollipop sticks, sticky taped together. This was secured to the back of the ship.
You could also make an anchor using a pipecleaner and some of the wool.
It surprised me to find out just how easy it is to make a paper box. Once you've got a template for a box shape, you can adapt it to a lot of different uses. And I also found that kids just love boxes. The empowerment they get from being actually able to make their very own is also quite inspiring.
This project shows how to make a box, and how to put something in it. Namely, in this case, a Jack in the Box. It is all made out of paper, and if you want you can decorate it with just pen or crayon so there's no need for additional material. I'd rather put some googly eyes on the 'spring' that makes the Jack in the Box though, for that extra surprise factor.
I do have one word of warning here though for parents. After making this my son spent a couple of hours 'suprising' us with the box. "Look a present for you mummy, open it!". And of course you have to act surprised every time!
The materials you'll need for this project:
I've included examples of two types of box templates here. The first one is the same as the one we used, with sticky tape on the inside to hold it all together. If you want a bit more structural integrity, and are a bit braver then me, you could try using the second template with tabs. Then just glue the tabs in when you make up the box.
Next, you need to make up the paper 'spring' for the Jack cut out two strips of paper or card. We used two different colours for ours, but you could cut from the same sheet.
To make the spring, springy, fan-fold each strip. A fan fold is made by folding over a portion of the paper. Crease it, turn it over, and keeping the first fold closed, fold the paper back the other direction. Make sure this matches the size of the first fold. Crease the new fold. Keep going until all the paper has been folded, but make sure you don't go mad as it will have to fit inside the box you've made.
Here's a couple of tips when making your box. Make sure you have made the lid big enough. I didn't allow enough space for the lip, and as a result the lid won't tuck in properly. So you have to hold it down or the Jack pops right out.
Second, we glued the 'face' right on to the top of the spring. After we'd made it. Next time I would do the first fold, then glue the face on so I can put something weighty on top to hold it down while drying. I'm afraid that our face didn't last too long (and in fact was lost before I could photo it, hence the lack of anything in the photo!).
This is a lovely little craft that actually takes a while to do. It made a great rainy day activity a few weeks ago. But I can't lay claim to it. We were around at a friend's house, and she had a hot glue gun. Now I really do think I need to get one of those as it made the structure that little bit more stable. But I think that will liberal application, and suitable drying time, you'll be able to do the same sort of thing with PVA glue.
The other thing I would change is the base. We only had coloured paper for this. Although it is slightly stiffer than normal paper, I think a card base would be better. Perhaps even using something like a paper plate.
For this project you will need:
First off we used my friend's wool to wrap around the toilet rolls. The boys could pick any colours they wanted to. A variety of colours on a roll looks quite good. At the bottom and top I cut a tiny little notch, and used it to secure in the ends of the wool. For the middle I stuck one end down with a bit of tape, and wound the wool around it.
We used pipe cleaners around the top. These looked a little bit like hair, but also disguise the top of the cardboard tube. We used toilet rolls but you could cut down and use the insides of cling film, wrapping paper, or paper towels for example.
Next we put on the faces. As we used a glue gun it dried fairly quickly but even so we left the tubes at this point to let them dry properly. You may want to leave overnight if using another type of glue. One tip that I've used in the past on similar projects is to put a weight down on the item being glued, especially as wool isn't that easy to adhere to. If that might squash your tube, try clipping it down with a clothes peg.
Finally the tubes were stuck on the base, which in this case was not as sturdy as I'd have liked. It made it awkward to carry home for one thing, as the tubes kept flopping over. One good thing about using glue here is that it also secured in the bottom length of wool, which was also glued to the base. Probably unintentionally - that's the heavy hand of a six year old for you!
This week's project comes to you courtesy of Mother's Day in New Zealand, which is on a different day than the rest of the world. Sadly, no, I don't get two lie-ins a year. I decided that it would be a great idea for my son to make something for my mother, who as she's 12,000 miles away, doesn't often get to see her grandson.
For this project you will need:
You can also use little bits and bobs, especially anything shiny, that you might have to decorate the frame. I used two kinds of glue. PVA for attaching the frame together, and glue stick for putting some of the decorations on the frame.
For the stiff card, I cut open an old cat food box. As we were making a present, I cut this out so it would look fairly nice. But for a fun project let the child have a go. You need to do the edges, which are scollaped in my frame, and cut out a rectangle in the middle for the photo.
Put the frame on the card and use a pence to mark out the area that will be visible when it is all put together.
First, we did the frame as this takes a bit longer to dry if you use acrylic paints. I always keep an eye out for these paints in the pound shop, and especially for sales on the big tubs in craft stores and the ELC.
I fixed the frame to some newspaper with blu-tac, and let my son loose with teh paint brush. He had a bit of fun with that!
While it was drying, we stuck the photo onto the card. Mine was just a print out from the computer, so I used glue stick. Then my son drew on a body, and coloured it in. He was far less interested in this than in painting and gluing, so the result was not his best work.
Once the paint was dry, we stuck on the decorations, and glued the two pieces together.
And there you are. One creative and fun photo frame. I would guess it would be easy to work out how to make a stand for it at the back, but I haven't quite got that far yet!
This is a lovely craft, and one I can claim no credit for at all. My son went to an arts and crafts workshop, and this is what they made. I was just blown away by what a simple idea it was. My son made a frog, but other children used the same idea to make rabbits, tigers and zebras.
There's so much you can do with a paper plate - I covered making a mask in an earlier Workshop. They're really cheap too. You can pick up a large pack for a £1 at the poundshop.
For this project you will need:
First, take one of the paper plates and cut out the frog's eyes. Or, if you're doing a tiger you can just draw the eyes in the plate, and cut out the top section into the ears (two little triangles). Using the pen, give these a little 'cartoon' shape at the bottom. This helps the child know where to paint.
The mouth and tongue were shapes cut out of paper and glued on to the paper plate after it had been painted. You can do this before, but it does really help the child if they can just paint all over it. And it gives it a nice finish (no overlapping paint).
And then you get to do a lot of messy painting! Do both the plate for the head and the plate for the body.
While you're waiting for this to dry you can make the legs. We did these by cutting strips of paper, and then folding them into zig zag shapes.
The paper legs and the plates are glued together when it is dry. Or at least fairly dryish!
As part of the curriculum in Year One, my son has been doing a lot about 3D shapes, like cubes and cylinders. As a result he's got very interested in creating 3D shapes, like the Wall-E costume he made here.
This is a really simple craft, and one that is fairly easy but fun to put together. It helps the child with shapes and with construction as well.
What you will need for this project:
Choose a subject matter that you know will interest your child. However, make sure it is based around a very simple shape. In this case, I went for an underwater theme, as my son is quite captivated by anything fish related. A fish shape can be quite a simple shape to create using ovals, and also triangles if you like. Also, there's scope to have it swimming through seaweed, and bubbles.
This is one project that took quite a bit of preparation on my part. I cut out all the little shapes that we might want to use in advance. With an older child, you could get them to do this. However, I thought that with the number of shapes required, he'd soon lose interest in such a repetitive task.
First you can make the main picture. In this case, the fish. Together we both cut out the large ovals that make the fish. One big one for the main body. Fold this in half, and glue one side to a sheet of card. Do the same with a smaller folded oval for the fin, and we did a couple to use as the tail.
You can glue on googly eyes if you have them or you can make some using white and black. This is what we did for the big fish in the middle.
Next we added the seaweed. This is where the Pritt Stick is definitely required. I made the mistake of trying to use PVA glue to start with. However, it didn't dry fast enough, and caused the seaweed structure to slide around as each piece was added. Plus little hands tend to go heavy on applying the glue rather than light. Let's just say it all ended up as a soggy mess.
I took small circle shapes and folded them in half. Then my son spread glue on one side of a folded circle, and stuck it to another one. In this way he was able to build the seaweed up from the paper ... and then back down again.
It was a very simple effect to create, and the result was immediate, so he could see straight away what he would eventually achieve. This was important in keeping him motivated. When he doesn't know what he'll get at the end, I've found that he finds it more difficult to stick to the task!
Here’s another Workshop Wednesday from Maggy at Red Ted Art! [Emma]
You may have seen some of my other crafts shared on Playpennies – there were dinosaurs and ambulances and monsters. But how about the little girls in our life? And with spring in the air, there is nothing better than a “crafting” with flowers. This is a wonderful craft to do, when you are out for a walk or at the playground or sitting in a park... grab those dandelion “weeds” and make them into something beautiful.
You may find them tricky at first (as with anything new), but they are really easy!
We were lucky that a good friend from Sweden was visiting and she showed us how:
Try and get the flower heads as close to the stem and together as possible. You can pinch off any of the remaining stems if it gets too bulky. Interweave other wild/ weed flowers for more colours and prettiness. Done!
(Click for larger ^^^)
This week's project is brought to you entirely by my six year old son. He came up with the idea, and did it all himself. I was rather impressed with the end result from a kid who isn't particularly artistic.
His half term maths homework was to create a model using the 3D shapes they'd been studying at school, like cubes and cylinders. The suggestion was to make a house out of a cardboard box.
I got out an old cardboard box, and said "let's make a house". My son looked at the box and saw a Wall-E costume.
For this project you will need:
Open both the top and the bottom of the box, but don't cut off any flaps. Push those inside the box to give it some added stability, and to attach the straps without piercing the box.
Use a ruler to draw a line about two thirds of the way up the front of the box. This will help your little one do a straight-ish line. The part above this line will be painted grey. He mixed white paint with a little black to get the right Wall-E type shade.
I got these small tubes of acrylic paints from the 99p shop. They're not fabulous. The paint mixture is rather dry and quite thick, and doesn't thin particularly well. But for most purposes a six year old or younger will need it for, it'll do the job.
He used yellow acrylic paint for the rest of the box. I got a big pot of this in a sale at The Works earlier in the year. Worth stocking up on any colour you find, if it is massively reduced. I find I'll use it eventually. This was the one part I helped him with, as it took three coats and he got a little bit bored.
Once the paints were dry, he drew on the details using the black marker pen. Anything in colour he used the acrylic paints, like the white E on the red circle. Getting the orangey stripes on the front required mixing colours again to achieve the right shade, so this was a good project for teaching him about that.
The only thing mummy had to do was create the straps to hold up the box and I did this wrong! I put them in on the sides of the box. Which son then showed me I should have put them in on the front and back, as sides are too far apart for them to sit on his shoulders. Nothing quite like having your mistakes corrected by a six year old!
Here's another Workshop Wednesday from Maggy! [Emma]
As you may know, over at Red Ted Art my children and like to get crafty. We also like combining what we craft with a story. Sometimes the craft comes first. Sometimes the book comes first.
Today, the book most definitely came first. It is called “Who’s Hiding” by Satoru Onishi. I bought it a while back, when Red Ted (now 3yrs) was still small. Red Ted liked it, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. Enter Pip Squeak (17mths)… and she absolutely adores it. She can’t get enough of it and we read "Who's Hiding" at least once a day. It goes to show how different children are.
So, what is the book? It is a very simply illustrated book on animals. Each double page has a set of 24 stylised animals – simple outlines and simple colours. The background of the pages changes colours, which results in one or more animals “disappearing” and you have to say which one it is. On some pages we are asked, “Who is sleeping?” On others, “Who is backwards?” Simple. Sweet. Fabulously illustrated.
On around the 100th read, I suddenly realised that a number of the animals are indeed loo roll shaped... enter today’s craft!
They are not ALL loo roll shaped (thankfully, as I did get a *little* bored after about the 9th one). So, we focussed on:
The DogWe used: Loo rolls (+one thinner tube, it may have had wrapping paper on it), acrylic paint (though you can use poster paint with a bit of PVA glue mixed in), felt (though you can use card), googley eyes (though I like the ones with “paper eyes” better), glue, black marker pen for nose and mouth
Don’t forget to add your detail to the backs!
I have to get a glue gun, apparently. My son got to use one I'd had on loan from a friend for this project, and he has fallen in love with it.
Actually, what happened was that my friend, who's a much better artist than I will ever be, came to visit. Using balsa wood, which you can buy at most craft and toy shops, a craft knife and a hot glue gun, we made little lolly stick versions of ourselves. You can see the one my son made above.
He enjoyed this so much my son wanted to make an entire lolly stick family. It occurred to me that I could achieve the same result, using materials we have around the house already.
Materials you will need:
First, draw the outline of your figure on the cardboard. Then cut it out. You can either do the whole body, and attach to a stick. Or you can cut a head and neck out of the card, and use sticks to make a body, arms and legs. Both are shown here.
Then cut out the material for clothes, and draw on the face. Or use googly eyes. Here you can use anything you might have lying around. Silver foil to send your family into space, for example.
For a young child, you can prepare all the bits and let them stick it all together. The advantage of the glue gun was the quicker drying time. With the PVA glue we made the body one day, and put all the clothes on it the next day.
My son then turned one of the dining room chairs into a puppet theatre, and put on a puppet show. It was a lot of fun. And great for kids, as they can use it to act out scenarios from family life, as it appears from their perspective.
When the occupational therapist told me that my son should do one craft project a week, at least, my heart sank. I'm no artist. In fact, I'm the opposite of artist. I'd never really got into crafts before because I had no talent for it, and my son had no interest.
What, really, was the point of doing an activity if he was only going to keep to it for five minutes or maybe ten minutes, a week?
Now I know. Sure my efforts are rubbish, but I'm astounded at what my son can do and the ideas he will come up with. The use of colours, or design. He still doesn't keep focussed on it for any longer than 10 minutes. But those are 10 minutes that we spend together, and in which he can do a bit of experimenting. And we'd never have had those ten minutes before. So, I no longer view this as a waste of time.
Today my son is off on his Year One school trip to the zoo. All last week they were studying penguins. Most exciting of all was a video they watched in class all about the Emperor Penguin. I had this re-enacted in its entirety at home.
My plans for our craft project this week had involved silver foil and outer space. I had big plans for making our own 'space suits', and making some planets.
As is often the case with kids that all went out of the window. Pouncing on the roll of silver wrapping foil with glee, my son set about making his own ice world. Silver is in fact surprisingly good for an icy landscape. This is the end result. It is all my son's ideas, he led this craft project entirely. Mummy was only there to help make the ideas a reality when it got a bit beyond his abilities.
Like using scissors, which he still hasn't developed enough strength in his fingers to do properly. But, we're working on that!
For this project we used a roll of silver wrapping foil, some felt tips, scissors, the little plastic containers you get from inside Kinder eggs, a bit of blu tac and sticky tape, and a whole lot of imagination.
Give it a try. Hand your child a roll of silver foil and some materials and see what they come up with. Can you guess though which of the 'penquins' mummy made?
Maggy is visiting again from Red Ted Art to share another post in our workshop series here on PlayPennies.
We are now entering the big “dinosaur stage.” Luckily my son isn’t obsessed with any one thing, but does take an interest in your classic boy crafts – dinosaurs, pirates, cars etc… Having said that, so does my little girl, so hopefully you will find inspiration for both today!
So today we make a dinosaur collage.
This is a great craft, as it uses the traditional idea of bubble wrap printing. Most children LOVE bubblewrap printing – it is fun and yields great results. I also like this craft, as it tends a little more towards traditional art; the idea of building up a picture step by step, adding different layers and exploring different ideas and materials. We only used materials that we had to hand, so there is a little bit of recycling going on too. Also, as we used dinosaur stencils, and this is a great exercise for tuning fine motorskills. I did have to help Red Ted, as he is only 3. But he had a go, which is the main thing!
To our collage
Materials: 2 sheets of paper (for the dinosaurs), one large piece of card (salvaged from a book delivery), bubble wrap, bark for trees, glue, paint, brushes, scissors.
You don’t necessarily need the materials we used. E.g. You could paint or use tissue paper for the trees. This is to inspire you – make it yours!
Tips:
I was looking for an alternative way to decorate eggs for Easter with my son. Not having done it before I was frankly a bit unsure about doing the whole egg blowing thing.
Then I came across this idea on the internet for doing it with crayons, using the heat from the boiled egg to melt the crayon. Genius. Would it work with a six year old, or would it be a disaster? The only way to find out was to try it.
For a wider variety of ways to decorate eggs for Easter, check out Tamsin Oxford's feature tomorrow at 1pm.
To do this project you will need:
If you haven't got an egg carton you can use to put the hot egg in while you're working, then I've been told a bottle top (like you kind you get off a 2litre bottle of fizzy pop) will do the job.
Being a cautious person and not wanting to waste eggs unnecessarily, I only boiled two eggs to start with. This was a bit of a mistake actually, as I probably left them in too long and just before I took them out of the pan, one of the eggs cracked. This meant we only had one egg to work on.
Which my son jealously guarded. Mummy was not allowed to touch HIS egg. So I only got to live this one vicariously.
The tongs are very necessary to get the egg out of the pan, and to move it around while you are working. The boiled egg stays extremely hot for quite a while. This impressed my son a great deal, who thought it was really cool to be working with a scorching hot egg (he only touched it once!).
That it could burn gave the project a frission of danger that ordinary egg decorating wouldn't have. And that made it really 'cool', apparently.
Then all you have to do is press down on the eggshell with the crayon and it will melt directly onto the egg. You can build up quite a few layers of colour in this way too, and allow it to run down from the top to create a 'dripping' effect.
My son chose to decorate his with octopus and jellyfish rather than flowers, although the end result looks pretty much the same to me. But sssh, don't tell him!
He happily worked on his egg while I did the dishes. All I had to do was turn the egg now and again, so he could get to another clear patch.
I used some old eggs for this, that were a bit past their use by date although they hadn't gone off. And they were from Iceland so in the clear plastic carton. This is something I have to stress I normally try to avoid, as I don't like adding to the plastic waste there already is.
But in this case I think it worked well as I was able to cut out the little egg holder bit and use it as a stand for the egg.
Alternatively, if I'd used a cardboard carton, I probably would have painted it to use as a holder.
One other thing that impressed me using this method is that the colours stay quite strong. Also the texture of the crayon is quite nice.
The challenge I faced last week was, how do you keep five little boys occupied? My son turned six. His birthday tea had a pirate theme. At least that was the plan, although on the day my son decided he wanted to dress as a dinosaur.
One good idea I came across was to draw their own pirate, treasure maps on Ye Olde Pirate Parchment paper. It was just as well I made quite a bit of the paper, because the boys loved it. They happily sat there scribbling out 'treasure' maps for the best part of a half hour.
For this, all you need is some white paper, cold leftover tea or coffee, and er that's about it. When I'd planned on using some paper myself to make a map for a treasure hunt (abandoned idea as garden not big enough) I'd practiced using watercolour paints with a set of artists brushes from the pound shop (12 brushes for 99p).
Now, to make the parchment paper. First, you need to tear around the edges of the paper you're using. You don't want any straight edges. Then, have a cup of tea or coffee, and plus an extra cup to use for the project.
Although I used coffee, I've since found that most people recommend using tea. This might have given a darker, more mottled look to the paper. You could experiment a little with both.
First, I tried using an old ice cream container to soak the paper in. But this really isn't big enough and you have to keep moving the paper around. Next, I used an old oven tray. I expect a baking tray would work well too.
This way the paper could lay flat, and I could just leave it. After three or four hours soaking in the cold coffee and the coffee grinds, I took the paper out and left it on a plate to dry. I did this just in the mornings, and again in the evening, over the course of a couple of weeks.
The end effect is good. The paper looks dirty and aged, and has a slightly brittle but rough quality. One effect that I wasn't expecting was that the torn edges all came out a dark brown colour. This was a bonus as it saved me having to try and singe the edges with a match. I hadn't been looking forward to doing that!
In our continuing series of workshops to craft with the kids, here's a post from Maggy of Redtedart.com.
This another fabulously Germanic traditional and tactile craft. What is also great about these little guys is that you can make several – with different numbers of dots and then use them to practice counting. The very young amongst us can paint the red and get help with the dots and the feet. My son commented that we needed googley eyes… He LOVES googley eyes, but I also think “plain” is nice!
Materials: 1 walnut half per ladybird, red & black paint, black card, scissors, glue
Tip: I find the best way to split a walnut in half is with a large knife – insert it into any weak spot you can see and apply pressure on a chopping board. Needless to say, an adult should always do this. I manage to open 80% of my walnuts without breaking them this way, providing me with two shells.
Play or decorate the window sill!
Maggy is visiting from over at Red Ted Art were she regularly gets crafty with her 3 year old son (Red Ted) and 1 year old daughter (Pip Squeak). Maggy has collated some of her recent work into an ebook, which you might enjoy if you like our series of workshop posts.
Today’s craft was all dictated by Red Ted. He has gotten the hang of the fact that mummy and daddy can make anything. Recently we made castle and loo roll men over at Red Ted Art and the project just mushroomed and mushroomed.
Remember the book “Harry & The Robots” that was reviewed here on Playpennies Robot Card post a while back? Well, it was the sole source that inspired the craft today.
Quick synopsis: Harry has a robot that needs to go to robot hospital. His Granny (who is feeding the chickens in the garden) promises to make a new one with him. That night she is taken to hospital in the ambulance. Harry makes some robots on his own and brings them to Granny in hospital. The kind doctor encourages this. Eventually Granny comes home again as does the original robot and they sit in the garden feeding the chickens.
Red Ted decided that three of the loo roll people we had made for the castle craft were to be Harry, Granny and the Doctor (from the book) and started role playing. He quickly decided that we need an ambulance for Granny, as well as some of her chickens. So today, I talk you through how to make:
Random, I know, but that is how children’s minds work and hopefully they will provide you with inspiration to meet your child’s crafting demands!
Loo roll people:
Materials: One loo roll per person, pink paint, googly eyes, fabric scraps, pen, glue and optional pipecleaner for arms.
Chickens:
Materials: Cardboard, loo roll, paint, googly eyes and glue.
This method can of course be applied to any animal your child demands from you – it would also make a good cow, cat, dog, sheep…
Ambulance:
Materials: a box, some coloured card or relevant paint, glue and pen.
Finished - now go play!
Daffodil's are the traditional flower for Mother's Day. There's a good reason for this. They are in flower, and they grow like, well, wild flowers. It seems like every patch of spare ground and park land has a little crop of yellow flowers growing there.
However, that doesn't necessarily mean you can or should pick them. Flowers left to grow will be there for the enjoyment of all, for starters. But also, if they're growing in the park, then you're not actually allowed to pick them. I know that the park rangers will probably turn a blind eye to a kiddie picking one or two on Mother's day morning. Just not armfuls of them.
How about getting the kids to make a daffodil instead? There's lots of ideas online for doing this. I found a template on one site - if you want to use this click HERE.
However, I don't have a printer so I had to find other ways of doing it.
Here's what you'll need for this project to make one flower:
First, cut out one of the egg cups from the egg carton. My son, and a friend who was over for a sleepover, were the guinea pigs for this craft. Paint the egg cup in the yellow acrylic paint, both inside and outside the cup. Put it to one side to dry.
I tried to use green card for the stem, but this was too stiff to roll properly.
Roll the green paper it up into a long tube for the stem. I needed to help the boys out with this. Both of them had a good go, but it does take a bit of practice to roll up a tube of paper fairly small.
Tape them up and then flatten down one end. This is where the flower will go. You can add leaves to the stem. I didn't do that here, but if you've some green card it is easy enough to do.
For the petals, I cut an A4 sheet of yellow card in half. That was one half for each flower. I cut the half into quarters, so I had four equally shaped squares. I then trimmed this into a petal shape.
Arrange the four petals, and tape the back into position. Put the flat end of the stem on the back of the flower shape, and tape that down. Now, turn it over, get the egg cup you painted yellow before and glue it into the centre of the petals.
My son's friend was particularly excited to be able to give his mum a flower, it really was very sweet. This would make a lovely present from the kids to mum, or to grandma, on the 3rd of April. That's the date of Mothering Sunday this year, in case you've missed it!
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