Welcome to the third post in our series of ideas for child-made Christmas presents: how to make a money box.
We’re sharing suggestions for gifts that are easy for the children to make and lovely for someone else to receive, and encourage the children to join in with the spirit of the season and give a little something to those they love.
This money box is so easy to make even a finger-painting baby can help make one.
Welcome to the second post in our series of ideas for child-made Christmas presents: how to finger knit a brooch. We’re sharing suggestions for gifts that are easy for the children to make and lovely for someone else to receive, and encourage the children to join in with the spirit of the season and give a little something to those they love.
This brooch is do-able for a child from around five upwards, with a little help with the sewing, and an older child (seven-ish) could try all by themselves. You can make the brooch in any colour wool that you choose and it can be put together in the space of an hour. It’s great fine-motor practise for nimble fingers too.
We’re bringing you some ideas for presents children can make this week. However young your children are we’ll have an idea for you that lets them get creating and join in with the spirit of giving gifts to those they love.
Do you remember the toilet roll tubes from last week’s Play Academy? No-one guessed what they were for! Not an advent calendar, not snowmen but in fact a frosty winter village, for some small world play.
We started by cutting our toilet roll tubes into different sizes so we could have a variety of houses and then painted them all white. We used acrylic paint as it covered the cardboard better than our water-based poster paint. [Read more…]
Throughout December twenty four international blogs are linking up to bring you Christmas activity ideas all the way ’til Christmas Day.
We have an interactive advent calendar that lets you click on a new window each day and hop through to find a fun children’s craft or activity idea to enjoy.
There are so many beautiful, detailed gingerbread houses around on the internet but when it comes to gingerbread houses for children I think you want to focus on fun rather than perfection.
Kids want to be hands-on in an activity, and free to add their own creative flourishes, so here’s our solution for child-friendly houses: gingerbread cookies.
Easy and quick to make so everyone can have (at least) one each, which means everyone can be making and doing all the time and can make their gingerbread house look exactly how they choose.
The first step is to bake up a batch of gingerbread. We used our favourite gingerbread recipe and cut it out the shapes using a house cookie cutter.
Once the gingerbread houses are cool the decorating can begin.
We used some small tubes of ready-mixed writing icing, which meant everyone had their own tube, so there was no waiting around. The tubes proved to be really easy for everyone to use by themselves.
You can use the icing to outline windows and roofs, to draw patterns or as glue to stick on your sweets. Playing Christmas music so you can sing along while you decorate is fun.
Each child had a pot with a selection of sweets in, so no squabbling and you can control just how much sugar each child has access to! Some of our decorators decided less was more.
However, sometimes more is more – especially when you realise anything you put on your house is yours to eat.
I think our version of gingerbread houses for children turned out great – a fun Christmas activity and just right as a sweet gift for friends too.
