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...