Aug 1, 2021
It's been a while I haven't added any activity to this blog. With Australia swinging between lockdowns, more restrictions, less restrictions, who knows what's going to be tomorrow etc, and adding this to the miserable weather we're having in Perth, I though it may be just the right time to do something new - hoping other families get some inspiration of possible indoor fun entertaining activities to do.
This activity started as a drama: my daughter (now 5, times flies) has a friend who came for a play date and brought some toy jewellery that went into pieces. I put the pieces away and promised to think about reusing them in a crafting activity. So today we made a crown.
We used the usual cereal box, measured with a ruler to make it symmetrical, gave it a shape with a pencil, cut, joined pieces, decorate.. et voila :)
Now, the difficult (and fun bit) is the one when we realised no glue would stick the jewellery on the crown (that's materials science: the material used to make the glue is never compatible to every material, it clearly wasn't in our case). So.. we (I) sewed it! That was a good patience exercise for my daughter, who was enthusiastic about this solution but had to wait for me to sew. She observed carefully, wanted me to explain every bit I was doing.
Not difficult, but requires a bit of fine manual skills.
Learning outcomes:
measuring
fine manual skills
Materials: cereal box, pencil, glue, jewels, stickers and things to decorate, sticky tape, scissors, needle & thread - H&S: supervise your children or do the cutting for them; sewing with a small sharp needle is for old kids & adults.
Note:
1) please avoid buying toys that are so unsustainable - toys that it's clear they're going to break after 5 mins of play;
2) please when something breaks, try to make the best out of it before throwing it away.