Here is what we have been up to:
Christmas angels
My fabulous friend Sam often comes for a play with her youngest while our two older girls are at school and nursery. We have shamed ourselves into realising the huge amount of craft fun the older girls were exposed to and how little our second children have done – so, we are trying to make our playdates crafty ones too and its been great fun. She has great ideas and turned up this week with some lovely little christmas angels for us to paint and glue.
They are super easy. Simply a cut up an empty kitchen roll tube or loo roll for the body. We then cut wings out of a cereal box and stapled them onto the rolls. Let the kids loose with some paint and if you can bear it… GLITTER! A little pipe cleaner halo, some googly eyes and hey presto – a Christmas angel that won’t take too long – perfect for two 2.5 year olds!
Patchwork name decorations
When I am not getting crafty with my kids, I love making things myself. I am working on some bunting for Christmas and had loads of scraps of material left over so thought it would be fun for the girls to make their own little patchwork names.
I love the snow dough that I first saw on the fabulous Imagination Tree and can’t wait to make up a batch.
We accidentally added a festive twist to some regular playdough play last week. We were buy making monsters and discovered a great way to make candy canes stripes – alternately prodding a drinking straw into two different colours of dough and then squeezing it out to make stripy dough!
We play a lot with Beas fairy house and Freya wanted in on the action and luckily her mummy and daddy had managed to drink enough to empty another box of beer – they really do make the best size houses! I was taken aback by the attention she paid to making her very own house and was very definite on which colours she wanted to use!
First we decided where she wanted to put the door and windows, then i cut them with a craft knife. She then set to work painting it all over. After lunch when it had all dried, we glued on the little shell windows and feathers and the ‘snow effect’ roof out of box packing. I tried to make a pattern out of the glue but the thought of glue and glitter was too exciting so we just added loads of glitter everywhere instead (I struggle to let go of control of Glitter pots!)
Tinkerbell has moved out of Beas house and moved into her more bling Christmas home for the holidays… Bea decided hers was more of a summer fairy house 🙂
This is my favourite EASY craft so far this festive season. We have quite a few christmas parties to go to and I thought it would be nice to take the kids of our hosts a little something. The girls loved helping me make up some Reindeer Food for our friends children.
Bea was given a little bag of reindeer food by her nursery teachers last year and she really loved sprinkling it on grannies lawn last Christmas eve. It was a great activity to do after we had put some mince pies near the fire for Father Christmas, we headed outside to make sure the reindeer could see where to land and have a snack while they wait for their boss to do his job!
Its quite simply some porridge oats, some bird seed and most importantly, some glitter all mixed up in a bowl (we mixed ours with a wand and made Christmas wishes for extra effect!) I had some nice little jars hidden away so the girls filled them up and I wrote instructions and the kids names on the jars and attached a little wand for them to make their own christmas wishes with.
Once a week I meet up with my parents for a coffee after Freya and I walk their dog with them. She loves to be with them but well, there is only so much food a child can eat while her mum chats away to her mum and so last week I thought I would try a little busy bag. I have nearly always got a book or some pencils in my bag but thought it would be great if Freya had something she could do without too much input from me.
SO last year, I came up with my own answer…give the girls their own (bad) tree!! Perfect…. for £10 at a local DIY store, I got the worst silver tinsel tree that they love! We lit it up with flashing lights, we hung pink tinsel all over it (oh my spirit of Christmas is struggling!) and yes – there is finally a brilliant place for the girls to proudly display their beautiful decorations….I love the bad tree!
4 thoughts on “Seven simple seasonal crafts”
Eileen Dougherty
(December 5, 2012 - 7:18 pm)I love your blog and all of these wonderful ideas! They’ve been a great help to me as I’ve recovered from an illness and given me lots to do with my kiddos to keep us all from going insane! I found a link for edible glitter, too, just to make the raindeer food even more ridiculously delicious!
http://www.planetpals.com/craft-non-toxic-craft-supply-recipes.html#glitter
Sarah Thorogood
(December 5, 2012 - 10:15 pm)Hi Eileen, thanks so much for your comment, its very lovely to hear that you like and have enjoyed my ideas 🙂 I do hope you are on the road to recovery now. Love the idea of edible glitter so i will take a look…. i am not sure the reindeer mind though (or their little birdie friends who help them clear up the good stuff and leave the sparkles!!)
Erin D
(December 8, 2012 - 1:48 pm)If you go by my kids’ philosophy of Christmas trees, it isn’t done until you need sun glasses to protect you from the bling! Sounds like your mini-tree solution would be a hit here too!
Sarah Thorogood
(December 11, 2012 - 12:54 pm)its the best Erin – MY tree (note the possession!) is decorated with help from the girls – THEIR tree is all theirs and i actually quite enjoy buying the odd bright nasty decoration to help it on its way to blingdom 🙂