So I have to start this off by admitting that I nearly didn’t share this post. It is, by all accounts not exactly the most Pinterest friendly thing I’ve ever done and will probably take me a long, sweet time editing to get a photo that doesn’t show my messy home or my kids making daft faces. Then I realised that this is kind of the whole point. My kids are not stock photos and if they have cheesy grins in this that’s because they totally adored this activity. We had a box delivered from Amazon and my son informed me he wanted us to turn it into a Batmobile. You can’t turn requests like that down if you write a crafts blog, it’s a really poor show. So the challenge was set and all I had to do was try and quickly work out how to make a Batmobile out of a cardboard box!
crafts for kids
Darth Vader Craft Stick Puzzle
Every week this summer I’ll be sharing some craft ideas along with some of my blogging friends, everything’s being made with materials that a lot of parents have lying around and this week we’re kicking it off with stick crafts! I had this idea that we were going to do some beautiful thing with real sticks, but to be honest, give my kids a real stick and all they want to do is hit stuff. True fact! My son and I went hunting for inspiration and he decided that he really wanted to do a Star Wars craft. I thought maybe Boba Fett (my favourite) but he’s four so he calls the shots, instead we’ve made a fun little Darth Vader craft stick puzzle that’s super thrifty and I think super cool too!
Kinetic Sand Dinosaur Excavation
My son has been desperately wanting to try out some kinetic sand for ages and I have to admit that I have too! We were offered the chance to review some of the fab toys from House of Fraser and I knew straight away this is what he’d want to try, we’ve seen it played with on kids You Tube channels but I hadn’t seen it available in UK shops before. Of course rather than just have a play with it I thought I’d try something a bit extra so I set up a little activity in the form of this kinetic sand dinosaur excavation.
10 Sneaky Ways to Make Sand Play Educational
During the summer I’m generally in favour of opening the doors to the garden and letting my kids run riot, to me having fun is the most important thing a kid can do! However, the sensible mummy side to me does like to sneak a bit of learning in when I can, I’m not a fan of worksheets (though I do love the more educational comics) so it has to be something that the kids will find fun too! Playing with sand is one of my kids favourite things to do during warm weather so with that in mind I thought I’d share some educational sand play ideas, There’s some great ideas you can do indoors too so even if the weather isn’t that great you can still have fun!
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Bottle Top Crafts: DIY Stamps
So as regular readers will know I’m on a bit of a quest at the moment to find some activities for toddlers to do with my one year old.
She’s suddenly at that age where she wants to do ‘stuff’ but neither of us are quite sure what that ‘stuff’ is yet!
Because toddlers are notorious for having short attention spans I like to use cheap or recycled materials where I can, bottle top crafts are perfect for this as it means I get an extra use out of all the bottles of milk she goes through.
These DIY stamps are super simple to make and are a great way to help with fine motor skills too.