Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The goodness of felt

Really as a PS to the cabin fever... Anyhow - felt is also a brilliant boredom buster, we made pincushions today, but for other ideas...

  • homemade fuzzy felt
  • felt clothes/spots/ears etc bits to toilet roll people/animals
  • felt accessories for the dolls house/zoo animals/farmyard creatures
  • for first sewing attempts
  • for gluing together to make more permanent pictures/sculptures (think butterflies, flowers, beetles etc or whatever takes your kids fancy...). With the littlies probably best to do a bit of the cutting out pre-work
  • homemade Barbie/dolls/teddies clothes to the child's specs
  • for the older ones - needle holders (sandwich lighter fabric in a symmetrical shape with felt on top & bottom. Glue one half down solid - add needles to the other side so you can find them again, & yes I still use the one I was given when I was 5)

the list is endless - libraries always have a few kids craft books you can dig ideas out of.

Another one for odds and ends of wool besides the french knitting is those woven crossed sticks - remember doing them for fetes when we were kids?

Making the "chatterbox" out of different coloured squares of paper - can be used as just something to play with and get the fingers moving, add eyes/ears/tongue etc for animals, add messages or things to do for the "I'm bored" and go through the whole pick the colour & number routine to see what they get to do next

I'm sure there are also stacks of websites...

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Cabin Fever

Crossposted from my blog

We have had some very cold days, where the wind chill has taken the temp down as low as -18. I wouldn't rug us up to go outside even if Pers & I weren't afflicted with the flu. So as you can imagine, cabin fever is kicking in and I'm about to commit toddlercide.

I just need some ideas, what do you guys all like to do with the wee-ones when you're hovelled up inside your 23rd floor appartment?