Stationery Craft Ideas – #GetYourCraftOn

The #GetYourCraftOn Challenge is BACK! Each month, a set of crafty bloggers challenge YOU to get crafty and share your crafts with like minded people  - be it via instagram, twitter, Facebook or Google

Gifts Kids Can Make: Hama Bead Keyring Owls

So, we are coming to the end of our school year and I wanted Red Ted to make some small gifts for some of his “extra curricular” teachers. He has some lovely teachers, doing extra classes such as a writing workshop and “multi sports” with him and he loves the classes sooooo much. I thought it would be great for him to make them a small gift – something that doesn’t take him too long to make (as he needs to make four), that I know he enjoys doing (as he has to make four!! And is likely to want to keep them, this make 6-7!) and that the teachers would actually like too. I asked my Teacher Readers on FB their thoughts and they came up with great comments and suggestions – one of these was some “trolley coin hama bead keyrings”…. fabulous, Red Ted LOVES Hama Beads ad Trolley Coins are so handy! Perfect.  As our school has “bird names” for each of the classes, we thought bird Hama Beads – such as Owls and Penguins would be perfect. I spotted this Owl Hama Bead pattern and thought it was perfect. Red Ted then invented some Penguin Hama Beads and I created a Puffin (ish??) pattern, as Red Ted’s class are the Puffins! Here they are:

Nature Play Ideas – only nature needed

So, the Summer Holidays are upon us. The long warm days stretch ahead of us and the kids will be running riot. On our last holiday, we decided to take some books, pens & notebad, a pack of cards and nothing else. Our kids are 6yrs and 4yrs old. We brought no toys. We decided that we wouldn’t need any. And we didn’t. We had a great time together and we also had a great time exploring nature – seeing what nature items where in our local area and making up games and activities for what we could do with these “nature items”. Many of these nature play ideas can be “built” on once home and when you can add a dab of paint or a piece of string or glue. But, all of these ideas work “just as they are”, nothing but nature needed for lots of different play ideas. We took all the photos on my smartphone whilst on holiday. So really, these were “on the go” activities. I would say that the majority of the activities work well for 2yrs – 7yrs olds. There are a few for older kids too, but I would love to hear your thoughts!

Frozen Elsa Clothes Pin Doll

A few months ago, I was in Vienna doing a workshop to celebrate the launch of my book into German. I am so pleased to see it German print (some of you may remember that I am half Austrian!) and published by a fantastic German Publisher – Loewe Verlag. It forms part of a “Natur Kind” series and it is wonderful to be part of that.

We decided to keep the workshop simple and as “self directed” as possible and went for one of my kids favourite activities: decorating clothes pin dolls. We had a group of 30 or so 8-9yrs olds and it was lovely seeing all their different ideas. The boys made lots of superheros, some made dinosaurs and imaginary characters. The girls made their own Elsa’s and Anna’s. I am gutted that I didn’t take more photos, but I did want to share this Elsa Clothes Pin Doll with you, as I thought the girl that made this, did such a wonderful job:

Paper Plate Flying Saucer Craft

Clearly I am TERRIBLY bias, but I do love the crafts that Pip Squeak brings home from nursery. Recently, they made these adorable Paper Plate Flying saucers – such a wonderfully “classic” craft for kids and the kids adored making them as part of the “space lesson plans”. I love how they made it easy for the 3 and 4yrs old preschoolers to do as much as possible themselves.

New Brazil Colouring Pages, Printables and Worksheets

Just in time for the start of the World Cup! We've just added some lovely new colouring pages - one of the Christ the Redeemer (Cristo Redentor) statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro, the other of a rainforest scene. We've also got one of our printable postcards for both those pictures, and story paper. And we've also added a couple of fact-finding worksheets for the kids to get stuck into, two map work worksheets, and a printable outline map of South America showing Brazil's location.

Find them here: Brazil

Sunflowers for Summer!

If there's one flower that sums up what summer is about, it's the sunflower! We've had such fun putting together this collection of sunflower activities and we hope you enjoy them - you'll find lots of colouring pages, templates for your crafts, handwriting worksheets for the classroom, story paper, a learn to draw a sunflower tutorial, and lots more!

Find all our activities here: Sunflowers