All Crafts Archives - Page 24 of 34

Spring craft ebook

07/04/2011 by Cathy James 10 Comments

Here’s a spring gift to all of you – a fabulous Spring crafts and activities ebook!

The book is full of wonderful ideas for children of all ages: egg crafts, rainy days ideas, things to try in the garden and lots more. It has been compiled by Mandi from Life…Your Way and Allie from No Time For Flashcards. It features ideas from fifteen bloggers from around the world – including me! Take a look at their ideas and click though to their blogs to find lots more inspiration.

The Spring craft ebook is free to download – please help yourself and I hope you have fun trying out the ideas in it!

Click here to download your free Spring Craft eBook

happily shared with Tot Tuesday and Inspire Me Monday and Making Monday Marvelous and Tot school and Craft Schooling Sunday and arty crafty party Friday’s Nature Table and the Resource Centre and Preschool Corner and Something for the Weekend and Frugal Friday and For the Kids Friday

Junk model snake

04/04/2011 by Cathy James 7 Comments

After big sister’s guide on how to make a dinosaur world yesterday, today little sister is taking over the blogging reigns with her design for how to make a junk model snake.

To make a snake like L’s you will need: toilet roll tubes, scissors, paint, a long ribbon, stapler

Start by cutting each toilet roll tube into three. Paint them in your favourite colours adding extra stripes and spots to make them fancy. Mix some colours together to try out some new shades too. Our favourite was purple.

Once the paint is dry, choose one hoop to be your snake’s head. Thread the ribbon through and staple it in place. Cut the end of the ribbon to make it look like a snake’s tongue.

Thread all the other hoops on to the ribbon to make your long snake.

To fasten the last one in place and stop your snake falling to pieces, loop the ribbon round the last hoop and fasten it with a knot.

Add some nostrils and some eyes and your snake is ready to go a-slithering.

St. David’s day craft

22/02/2011 by Cathy James 8 Comments

Spring is in the air! Well almost, but you can cheat a bit and fill your house with gorgeous flowers with this idea for a daffodil windmill. It’s very easy to make and the children can have lots of fun blowing it and making it spin round. You can find full instructions for how to make one in our daffodil windmill tutorial.

They’re just the thing if you’re celebrating St. David’s Day, the patron saint of Wales, on March 1st. And if you are you might like this recipe for delicious Welsh cakes.

happily shared with ABCand123 and Today’s Creative Blog and Making Monday Marvellous and Friday’s Nature Table and Red Ted Art

National Doodle Day

10/02/2011 by Cathy James 1 Comment

Tomorrow Friday 11th February 2011 is National Doodle Day so go for it – get doodling! Can you create a doodle-friendly environment today? How about placing some paper, pencils, notepads, coloured pens and post-it notes around your play space and seeing what the children come up with. Sneak some into the tent, put some under the climbing frame, lay some out between the knives and forks at lunch time and see what your children doodle. When you sit down for story time today, have a clipboard and pencil on hand to capture any daydreamy doodles that might be inspired by the story.

National Doodle Day is run each year in the UK to raise funds for Epilepsy Action and if you’d like to support them you can enter their competition, where they’re giving prizes for the best doodle by individuals, nurseries and schools . Their site also has some tips on how you can interpret your doodles to find their hidden meanings.

Doodling is great for kids any day of the year of course. Having the opportunity to free-style lets children practise their pencil grip and try out different strokes, without any pressure to ‘do it the right way’. It lets them use their imagination and can also be a great calm-down activity or something to keep them occupied when you’re out and about. A magnetic scribble pad is perfect for taking in the buggy or car.

So – let’s get doodling! I’d love you take take a photo of your doodles and send me a picture. You can tweet me @nurturestore or add your photo to NurtureStore’s Facebook page.

Rabbit craft

26/01/2011 by Cathy James 7 Comments

Are you celebrating the Chinese new year next week? I like to observe celebrations from around the world with the children as I think it open their eyes to diverse cultures, showing them how people around the world are different but how the basis of many traditions are very similar too. We like to make Chinese style lanterns (which are perfect for practising scissors skills) and eating a Chinese meal. This year, which begins on 3rd February 2011, will be the year of the rabbit so here’s an idea for a craft you could try:

Potato Printing a Rabbit

We used potatoes and carrots to print with to make our rabbit. (Seems appropriate to use carrots, don’t you think?) Carrot printing is great for younger children as the carrots are just right for holding in little hands. Potatoes are a little more cumbersome to hold but you can make easier for the children to grasp if you cut out a handle into the top – as shown in the picture.

This rabbit design provides the opportunity to mix in some maths, as we thought about what shapes we could use to make our pictures. We decided to make a picture using just two shapes: circles and triangles.

I used a knife to cut out a triangle from the carrots, the potatoes were simply sliced in half.

We also talked about size as we used a big shape to make the body, ears and carrots and a small shape for the head, nose and carrot leaves.

We enjoyed having a specific project – working out how to form our rabbits and follow our instructions to create the pictures – but it was great to add in time at for some free style printing too, to see what other designs we could come up with using the circles and triangles.

More Chinese New Year activities

Raise a global child! Exploring festivals from different countries and cultures is a wonderful way to learn about the world. You can see our archive of Chinese New Year activities here.

Printable bird and bird house set

18/01/2011 by Cathy James 15 Comments

Valerie over at the Frugal Family Fun Blog has such great ideas and we love the crafts she does with her two girls. When we saw her post about a printable bird house play set we thought they were so cute we’d have to try and make some. The houses can be made from card, or even a recycled cereal box, and Valerie has given us all a template to use which means they are so easy to make.

B, who’s seven, managed to do all the stages by herself: tracing round the template, cutting, folding and sticking and she is really pleased with her birdhouse. She decided to leave the roof un-stuck so she could put some furniture inside and use it as a play house. The house was a little too tricky for L, who is four, to make by herself but she got involved drawing a pattern which we used to make the roof, and she’s really enjoying all the small world play now the houses are finished. We made some extra houses to hang in the window as decorations too and for these we stuck the roofs down. I think the co-ordinating roofs and perches make this a very stylish neighbourhood! We used recycled wrapping paper to make them but they’d be the perfect way to re-use your children’s art work too.

Printable bird template

Of course then we decided we needed someone to come and live in our bird street so we made a little flock of birds. If you’d like to make some the same as ours you can use this Printable bird template, which works out a great size to match with Valerie’s bird house. All you need to do is draw round the bird template on card, adding a slit where you can insert the wings. The wings are made from a piece of paper folded into a concertina and pushed through the slot in the bird’s body. You can make a hole above the wings if you want to hang them up on a cotton thread, or add a base so they can stand up if you’d like to play with them. You’ll find both options available on the template.

We used the same paper for the birds wings as we did the roofs of the houses, so it turned out to be a good matching game too, making sure all the birds got back to their own house. A big thank you to Valerie for the idea and the how-to bird house template. If you don’t already know the Frugal Family Fun Blog do pop by for a visit as I know you will love her ideas.

happily shared with Kids Get Crafty, Upcycled Awesome and Works for me Wednesday and Preschool Corner and Craft Schooling Sunday and No Time For Flashcards and Making Mondays Marvellous and and Mad Skills and Mad Skills Monday and Made by You Monday and Homemaker Monday and Sumo’s Sweet Stuff and Today’s Creative Blog and ABC and 123 and Something for the Weekend