Holly
Maggy Woodley is visiting from Red Ted Art, where she regularly gets crafty with her two young children. You will find weekly Kids Crafts for younger children or weekly Tutorials that will appeal to teens and adults.
I am very pleased to be here on Really Kid Friendly to talk to you about some great summer activities – hopefully they will come in hand throughout the summer holidays!
1 Boredom Jar
A boredom jar is a very simple idea that you can create at the beginning of your holiday – a great activity in itself, but hopefully helpful throughout the holidays. Make it as simple or complicated as you like (you can even pull one together whilst on that long car journey). So: get a jar, some paper and pens and start writing different things that you like doing individually or as a family – e.g. making popcorn, going for a walk, singing a song, making lots of crafty things (of course) etc. Put them on individual pieces of paper in the jar. Then on those “boring days”, get one of the children to pick an activity. You can always put a few surprise ones in (like going to the cinema or some other special treat). The boredom jar can be an activity itself (if not in a car): get the children to decorate it with shells, beads, pens and cover your pieces of paper in glitter and decorations!
2 Make Recycled Puppets and Put on a Play
Let your favourite book inspire you to get crafty. We have made 10s of different animals and characters out of loo rolls before. They are surprisingly easy and look, uhm quite good. Soooo. Do your kids have a favourite story? Get it out! And make the characters. Then sit behind the sofa and put on a play.
Materials: Loo roll, paint, googly eyes, glue and fabric scraps, pipecleaner optional.
Paint your loo roll pink and glue on some fabric scraps. Once dry, add googley eyes and features. Done. We also made an ambulance and some chickens to go with our story “Harry and the Robots”.
3 Make and write some postcards
This is in fact a double activity: a crafty one making the cards and a literacy one, getting your children to write the cards – a great activity for the holidays, when many parents worry about literacy rates going down. You just need some card stock as a basis… there are a number of different cards to make over at Red Ted Art. Why not pop by and be inspired? There is painting, sticking, gluing. Make them as messy or mess free as you like! They include Potato Print City Scapes, Fingerprint Cards, Robot Cards and even some SAND cards! Go on. Be inspired.
We love sending our cards to grandparents or friends.
4 Get Crafty with Nature
Again a bit of a double activity: go for a nice long walk, whilst out collected what you can see: sticks, leaves, stones. If you are lucky enough to be by the sea, some shells too.. then come home and get nature crafty! Googley eyes convert sticks and stones into creatures in seconds… but you can make pictures with leaves and mobiles with shells. If you need more inspiration check out the nature get crafty section of Red Ted Art!
5 One “Long Craft”
Do one “long craft” that you can dip in and out of during the holidays – e.g. learn to knit with your children, invest in a larger model (e.g. a dinosaur model), make a paper mache “something” (there is a Pinata on Red Ted Art, but piggy banks are popular crafts). The idea being that you are taking advantage of the fact that you have lots of time, rather than you feel under time pressure… Paper Mache is great, as you start, leave it to dry, do some more, leave it to dry some more, the do some painting etc etc. Learning a new skills like knitting or crochet is great as you have all those hours to fiddle with something (here is a how to teach yourself to crochet post).. or learn to juggle! I spent hours as a child, sitting in the garden practicing juggling! Job done.
Have fun these holidays! Don’t seen them as a chore, but as an opportunity to try out new things – all those things you and your family normally don’t have time for!
And if you need more crafty inspiration, do stop by at Red Ted Art or tweet me on twitter www.twitter.com/redtedart – I will gladly help where I can!
Maggy
