All posts tagged: Things to do with Sticks

Easy Paper Flower Craft

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Our season tree project got derailed when Bird Girl took such a shine to April’s incarnation – the rainbow tree – that any attempt to redecorate it was met with howls of protest. The rainbow tree now has pride of place in Bird Girl’s bedroom, and for a while I contemplated calling time on the tree-decorating over the summer months, while more exciting and demanding projects, like our vegetable patch, kept us busy. But when a twiggy branchlet got dislodged from our beautiful old silver birch tree, it seemed a shame for it to go to waste, so the seasonal tree project has been revived. Summer means flowers, so what better way to re-start than with some rather fetching pink paper ones? These were so easy to make – all we needed were a couple of sheets of tissue paper in two shades of pink, a pair of scissors, a glass to draw round and some pipe-cleaners. Here’s how we made them (this is a really great craft to let small children try,  although an adult will need to do / …

Spring sheep decorations

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“The thing about doing crafts with small children”, said my sister, “is that it seems like a fun idea, but it almost always ends up being really annoying.” She has a point.  It can be incredibly frustrating, to the point that sometimes the effort, mess and irritation seem to outweigh the potential for enjoyment and prevent you even getting started. But she had got me thinking. What makes for a good arts and crafts session with the under-fives, and how do you mitigate against the inevitable irritations? We certainly haven’t cracked it yet, but I have found a few tricks to make it go more smoothly. Keep it short and quick. Small child = short attention span. If they show signs of getting bored, stop. Pick something they can make from start to finish in less than 15 minutes. They lose interest if they don’t see results. Get everything ready before you suggest the activity.  They want to get started RIGHT NOW and won’t want to sit quietly in front of a tempting pot of glue …

Valentine Decorations

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February seems to have come round quickly, and it’s time to re-decorate our seasonal tree.  If it’s February, then it has to be Valentine-themed, which, as everyone knows, means hearts. But before embarking on our tree, I made a paper heart garland.  There are plenty of tutorials online for how to do this, so I won’t bore you with a step-by-step guide.  (If you want to try one yourself, click over to my valentine Pinterest board, where you’ll find links to several different online tutorials.) I used origami paper, cut into strips, and finished off with fabric washi tape to hide the staples, then threaded the hearts onto bakers’ twine (left over from Christmas wrapping!). And so to the tree… At Christmas we had jumped enthusiastically onto the salt-dough bandwagon to make tree decorations. But I found the whole salt-dough thing a bit disappointing. It’s not a great colour, it always takes longer to bake than you think it should, and it’s very difficult to get a flat, even, smooth finish.  You feel like you spend half the time …

Building a Den

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The National Trust has a fabulous initiative called “50 Things to Do Before You’re 11 3/4“, to encourage children to get out and about and explore the great outdoors.  We’ve been wanting to have a go at completing the list and so, with a spare few hours on a sunny Monday, we headed off into the woods and parkland of our local National Trust property – Hughenden Manor – to make a start on ticking off some of the 50 activities. First up on the list for us was No. 28 – Climb a huge hill.  And since Hughenden is in the Chilterns, it didn’t take us too long to find a suitable candidate. Once we had made it to the top, and had a brief snack break, it wasn’t exactly difficult to decide what to attempt next. Yes, it was time for No. 22 – Roll down a really big hill!  After contemplating the descent for a while, Chief Stick Collector decided he was game, and hurtled down with shrieks of delight. Bird Girl, on the other hand, still recovering …

Making a bird mobile

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Today my daughter and I had some time on our hands while Mr LetsTryThisAtHome took our son swimming.  It was time to put my money where my mouth is, and make a start on my new vow to introduce the children to crafting activities.  But where to start? It needed to be something I could do with ‘assistance’ from a two year-old, whose initial enthusiasm to help was unlikely to be equalled by her attention span or fine motor skills. In our front garden (and, to be honest, all over our back terrace too) are piles of sticks that my son insists on collecting whenever we go for walks in the woods by our house.  They have been waiting patiently to be incorporated into a mini project. So the idea for the bird mobile was born.  It would use some simple skills that a toddler could help with, would not be too time-consuming, and – most importantly – would use up some of those sticks. We started off by selecting some sticks to use for the hangers, and some …