2 Easter Hat Ideas

Cakey needs an Easter hat for her school Easter hat parade. Boo wants one because Cakey wants one. I tried really hard to make a hat from paper card but it was beyond me.... instead I bought a super cheap hat and we stuck stuff to it..... much, much easier. The idea was inspired by the gorgeous Easter hat created by Heather Designs.

Now to get all that lovely Easter stuff on the hat I used cotton and thread and my hot glue gun. I began by sewing the artificial flowers on where Cakey wanted them. I had planned to sew on everything but that was way too slow. Bring on the hot glue gun.... now here's the thing... I know that crafty people own hot glue guns because they are awesome BUT every single person who has to make stuff for kids should own one. You can get them in the supermarket! Seriously, they glue stuff on really well, really fast. You will burn your fingers but that is a small price to pay in my opinion.

Cakey showed me exactly where she wanted her little chicks, pink bunnies and glittery eggs and I stuck them on the hat for her. She is very happy with the hat and I only burned myself once!

Now Boo's hat is technically a paper crown. I wanted something easy that she could help make herself.  The base of the crown was created from a piece of A3 yellow paper card – it was cut in two pieces, which we stapled together to make one long flat crown.

This crown was inspired by this delightful version from Sun Hats and Wellie Boots. We made the crown very tall so there was plenty of surface to cover with foam easter egg stickers which I found in a local store. You don't need stickers though – you could easily cut out coloured paper easter eggs and glue them on.

We added some paper eggs on pipecleaners – they look very cute bobbing away on Boo's head! To make these I stapled the end of a pipecleaner to paper card cut in the shape of an Easter egg. I also stuck a foam egg sticker on top of each paper egg which covered up one side of the staple.

We then stapled the pipecleaners to the yellow paper card base of the crown in two places – you need two anchor points otherwise the pipecleaners do not stand up very well.

We stuck down a pink edging around the top of the crown – mainly to hide all the staples! I then wrapped the crown around Boo's head and stapled the two ends together to fit.

Some more Easter ideas:

I love those little yellow Easter chicks and you can see what we have done with them in the past here and here and here. We also had a lot of fun making glitter eggs.

I think this little pink felt bunny by Michael Ann is gorgeous if you can sew and I love these leaf print eggs. These treats by Living Locurto look delicious. And, I have created some Easter printables for the kids to give to friends, they are available on Childhood 101.

Cheers, Ali

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram.

Building ships with boxes

A cool little competition flew into my inbox. A cruise ship building competition with no restrictions on what materials you can use.... awesome! And you know what, we haven't had a great big crafting session in ages. When I uttered the words 'wanna make a cruise ship' the kids jumped at the chance.... their poor little neglected crafty souls screaming for tape and paint!

Cakey took on the challenge of making a cruise ship with cardboard boxes. We always have a stack of boxes in our tub of stuff that would normally hit the recycling bin. Having a tub of empty boxes as well as various ephemera is soooooo useful  for crafting and even, dare I say it, independent crafting.

Cakey decided stacking boxes was the way to go, securing them with sticky tape. She cut a door for the people and made a chimney with a massive plume of smoke, made from white tissue paper. Boo copied Cakey, as a little sister will, stacking two small boxes and adding a figurine person to sail her ship. Cakey added a life boat to her cruise ship. Sail boats are her speciality. She makes them using a styrofoam tray as the base and attachs a sail made from a straw and a piece of paper.

This project deserved paint. Cakey chose red, black and gold, Boo chose 'every colour paint'. I added some pva glue to the paint so that they could stick on some sparkles.

Cakey also got to try my new drawing tool - the white out pen. I have seen Alisa Burke use a white-out pen in her work and I have been intrigued to try it. Cakey got to it first and drew on the name of her ship and some windows. It worked a treat.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Christmas Pudding Decorations

Oh golly gosh these Christmas plum pudding decorations are so cute. Cakey and I had a great time making them and they look fab hanging on our Christmas tree.  I love a tree filled with homemade and kid-made Christmas ornaments.... don't you? Check out some of our other homemade tree decorations here and here. And keep reading to find out how to make these little puddings! 

Materials needed:

Small polystyrene balls (40mm)

Wooden skewers

Brown paint

White air drying clay

Red beads and green leaves

String and an anchor bead

Step 1: Skewer your polystyrene balls onto a wooden skewer and paint them a pudding brown. The kids made their own brown paint.... after all, they have had many years of practice making brown paint (they used a mix of red, purple and yellow). Leave the painted puddings to dry completely. 

Step 2: Once the paint is dry remove the skewers. Mould some white air drying clay over the top of each pudding ball – try to make the clay look like custard dripping over the pudding. Before the clay is dry make sure you re-open the hole created by the skewer - otherwise you won't be able to thread a string through the pudding.

Step 3: To decorate the puddings, push red beads and green decorative leaves into the clay before it dries. Sometimes the beads fall off once the clay has dried – glue them back on with superglue.

Step 4: Once the clay is completely dry, grab a needle and thread. Tie a bead onto the string to act as an anchor and thread the needle through the hole left by the skewer. Tie the string at the top to make a loop and hang it on your Christmas tree.

And there you have it! For more Christmas goodness have a look at my Christmas Pinterest board. 

You may also like to check out some of these kid-friendly Christmas crafts:

15 Christmas Decorations for Kids to Make by Picklebums

Icicle Ornaments by Happy Hooligans

Popstick Wreath by Childhood 101

Chenille Candy Canes

Toilet Roll Reindeer by The Craft Train

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Tissue paper lollies

Just as I was finishing this post Chris piped up "do you realise that only Australians will know what 'lollies' are, don't you?". Ummm maybe???? Ok so, lollies = sweets = candy. Problem solved!

This is one of those super simple crafts.... and it involves no paint or glue or glitter!!! All you need is a square of tissue paper and a tissue – roll it up and twist the ends. Cakey tells you everything you need to know in the video below. Please have a look, Cakey is very excited that her tutorial will be watched and she is hoping that someone in this world will like to make a paper lolly too.



As you can see from the tutorial it doesn't take long to make a tissue paper lolly. My kids made many, they also enjoyed making tiny little lollies. We experimented with different shapes – discovering that a crumpled tissue makes a lovely round paper lolly and a folded tissue makes a more rectangular lolly.

My little one, Boo, turned this craft into a pretend play lolly shop. We set up a little lolly shop with bowls of tissue paper lollies and a toy cash reigster.

Together we added some playdough lollies (sweets/candy). To make these, we rolled out a piece of blue playdough and a piece of pink playdough. We placed the pink playdough on top of the blue and then rolled the two together. I then sliced the roll to make swirly lollies which we popped into a jar for selling in our shop.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Red Ted Art: Cute and Easy Crafts for Kids

The kids and I were thrilled to receive a copy of Maggy Woodley's book Red Ted Art: Cute and Easy Crafts for Kids. This is a book with something for everyone –  it is a book of crafts to make with kids and a book of crafts to make for kids.

PROJECT #1: The first project from the book we set about making were the walnut boats. I bought a bag of walnuts from our local green-grocer. Using a nut cracker I carefully broke one side of the walnut – salvaging the other half to use for a boat.

The girls made flags for the boats using colourful scrapbooking paper, pva glue and toothpicks for the masts.

Maggy suggests filling your little boat with either melted candle wax, Blu-tack or playdough. I gave Boo Blu-tack to squash into her boat while Cakey and I experimented with melting candle wax into the little nuts.

At first I thought it was going to take a long time for the wax to fill the walnut shell but once the candle got going it took no time at all. After doing the first one myself, I handed the candle over to Cakey to fill all the walnut shells. I got the job of holidng the flag in the middle of each boat while the wax dried around it.

We made a handful of walnut boats and then sailed them in a bowl of water. Boo's Blu-tack filled boat sunk.... we called it the shipwreck... and we sailed the wax-filled boats around it. Download the free Walnut boats extract from Red Ted Art: Cute and Easy Crafts for Kids here.

Extracted from Red Ted Art by Maggy Woodley (available in hard copy or as an ebook)

PROJECT #2: As soon as I saw Maggy's Five Little Ducks in the book I really wanted to make them myself! The kids insisted on helping.... so together we chose our rocks from the garden and painted them yellow and white. Each rock got two coats of paint. Once they were dry I drew on their little duckie faces with permanent markers. Our little ducks have been given a home in a blue paper pond.

THE BOOK... There are tonnes of crafty ideas in this beautifully presented book. It is easy to follow with step by step instructions for each project. There are lots of 'my type of crafts' – making fun things from paper, stones and sticks. And.... if you are handy with a needle and thread then you will be happy indeed with gorgeous projects like felt doughnuts and strawberries.

Red Ted Art: Cute and Easy Crafts for Kids is available to order online through Fishpond (with free international shipping). It is also available from some independent book retailers here in Australia so keep your eye out for it. You can purchase an ebook copy from here.

To see more ideas from this fabulous book visit these Australian bloggers who are each featuring a Red Ted Art craft this month. And of course visit Maggy herself at Red Ted Art for more kid craft ideas than you can poke a stick at. :)

Sunday 16 June: Laughing Kids Learn’s Book review
Monday 17 June: One Perfect Day
Tuesday 18 June: Triple T Mum
Friday 21 June: Picklebums
Saturday 22 June: Mummy Musings and Mayhem 
Monday 24 June: My Little Bookcase
Tuesday 25 June: At Home with Ali 
Wednesday 26 June: Everyday Story
Thursday 27 June: Learn with Play at Home
Thursday 27 June: Lessons Learnt Journal
Friday 28 June: Wildlife Fun 4 Kids

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Team Tag – Simple Cars and Crayons

Today I have a little surprise for you. The contributors to Childhood 101 are playing a team tag game where we are sending readers on a journey through the blogosphere. So it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you fellow contributor, Kate from Picklebums. Today you can find me over at Octavia and Vicky with an energetic improvisation game for kids.

Kate is  an early childhood educator and Mum of four, who lives on a small property called ‘The Pickle Farm’ in rural Australia. Kate writes about all sorts of wonderful things from gentle parenting, gardening, family food to fun printables for the kids. Thanks for being here today Kate. (follow the link at the bottom of the post to join our game of tag)
_____________________

There are times when I need a quick and easy activity to engage one or two of my kids while I attend to something, or someone else. I don't have time to set up a fancy art activity, or create an elaborate imaginative play scene. What I need is something that is quick to set up, easy to clean up and that even my toddler can do independently. And sometimes, these quick and easy, spare of the moment activities turn out to be really great... this was one of those times!

I just needed ten minutes to have a sane, adult, phone conversation. I needed something new and interesting to engage my five year old and something the toddler could also join in with. It had to be an activity where they could work side by side, together, but still with enough space to do their own thing. 

I thought for a moment... what is one thing they both like right now? And how can I present that in a different, but easy to set up way? Then I had a brainwave!

I got out the long roll of paper and spread it right along our large dining table, from end to end. 

I grabbed the big box of pastels and dumped them in the middle of the paper.

I grabbed a handful of cars and popped them on the paper too.

Then I drew a road down the middle of the paper as the boys watched me.

That was it.

It didn't take the boys long to get in on the action...

Noah (who is two) drove cars up and down the road, while Morgan (who is five) drew car parking spaces, trees and an airport.

After I'd made my phone call and wandered back in I discovered both boys busy drawing their own roads and other items, creating elaborate imaginative play scenarios, making car noises and playing together happily.

I tucked this super simple idea away in a corner of my brain and have used it a few times since. We revisited the cars idea and also had lots of fun with drawing things for our wooden people. Even the big girls (nine year old twins) got in on the action when we combined Lego with the drawing.

I'd love to hear your ideas for super simple play that really hits the spot for your kids!

(You can find Kate on her blog, facebook, pinterest and twitter.)

_____________________

Thanks so much Kate for your super simple and fun idea. To keep the team tag going pop over and visit me at Octavia and Vicky. I have been dying to share our improvisation game.... exploring creativity in a different way. And then keep going and visit all the blogs in the team tag. There might be a new one to discover! Cheers Ali xx

Invitation to Craft – Easter

Easter is my favourite holiday.... chocolate, shiny foil, bunnies and little fluffy chicks... what a fabulous combination! I have been collecting easter-themed bits and pieces for a few weeks – some little chickens, bunny toothpicks and easter themed patty pans. The one thing that has been lacking is the inspiration for what to do with all this Easter cuteness. My brain feels tired, overwhelmed and out of ideas at the moment.

I decided that I would set it all up as an Invitation to craft (I love the invitation to play set-ups over at The Imagination Tree and Learn with Play@home). I laid out all the materials on our outdoor table, this is what I included:

• Patterned paper
• Scissors
• String
• Pipecleaners
• Container of pva glue with some pink paint added and a paintbrush
• 2 sets of easter chicks
• Easter-themed patty pans
• Bunny toothpicks
• Gluesticks
• Milk bottle tops

Way too much stuff really.... sometimes I go overboard. Not everything got used. The most popular items were the coloured pva glue, bottle tops, little chicks and bunny toothpicks. Boo asked for some pink playdough to go with it so we whipped up a batch together (based on this recipe, except I added vanilla oil instead of peppermint).

The kids created – combining bits and pieces together, dipping the string in the glue, making little seats for the chicks. It didn't really matter what they ended up making it was more important just to have fun and experiment.

Oh yeah... and this happened!!

For a great run-down on setting up Invitations to Play/Craft have a look at this post from Invitation to Play Tutorial from Teach Preschool. If you love Easter inspired craft have a look at Chicken World and don't miss my Easter Pinterest board.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS, google+ or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali

Linked to Kids Get Crafty and Tuesday Tots

Holiday activities for kids

How do you feel about colouring sheets? I would prefer my kids to draw than colour in pre-drawn scenes. I provide lots of opportunities and materials so that drawing is part of our everyday life. But you know what, I liked colouring sheets as a kid and my kids like them too. We don't use them regularly and I am not a fan of highly detailed colouring books. Thankfully there are many free printables available that give a little prod but don't do all the work. When my kids are a bit lack lustre about drawing, an inspirational colouring or activity sheet can do the trick.... and they are perfect for travel.

A couple of months ago we went on a holiday to the Gold Coast. We had lots of activities planned but I knew that there would also be plenty of time spent in our apartment. I remembered reading about a friend's Big Book of Crafty Goodness where she bound together a stack of kid-friendly printables as gifts. Brilliant idea.... I got to work and made two printable packs for my kids. These were loose leaf packs held together with paper clips and this is what they contained:

• Town colouring sheet by Lessons Learnt Journal. This printable is made up of stacked rectangles and triangles with lots of scope to add in your own detail.
• Printable Drawing Shapes by Picklebums. A whole variety of open-ended circle based printable sheets.
• Monsters by Picklebums. Cute monster shapes to cut out and play with on a vacation.
• Sample pages from Susan Striker's Anti-Coloring book. These are fabulous drawing prompts.
• Alphabet colouring pages by Mr Printables. I included the letters of my kids' names just for fun.
• Printable mazes. Cakey is just beginning to enjoy the challenge of a maze.
• A couple of abstract swirly doodles which you can download here and here.
• My fish printable. A simple fish outline perfect for kids to add fishy detail.
• My flowers and rainbows colouring sheet.
• I also included some coloured paper with random holes and shapes cut out of them, this was inspired by a post by The Artful Parent.
• Had I seen this post before the holiday I also would have included this awesome googly eye drawing prompt.

I also took away a set of pencils and markers as well as our watercolour tray. The kids chose to paint most of the printable sheets. When we returned I bound together the painted sheets as a holiday journal. On the back of each page I wrote a few notes to remind us of all the things we did on our family holiday. 

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali





Linked to The Kids Co-op, Tuesday Tots

Paper Plate Christmas Wreaths

Our paper plate Christmas wreaths were so much fun to make. Both kids loved them and made them their own..... and they spent ages at the craft table, which always makes me happy. The girls were so excited about this wreath craft that they insisted their Dad join them and make one too – he normally stays well away from the glue and sparkles.

There is nothing terribly complicated about this craft. I did do some preparation when the kids were asleep but it didn't take long. I cut the middle out of a stack of paper plates to use as the base of our wreaths. I also cut up Christmas scrapbooking paper into strips... and that was it for the pre-prep.

When the kids were ready to craft I handed over my stack of pre-cut bits, added some tubs of pva glue and paintbrushes and found some Christmassy sparkles. Then I let the kids go for it while I sat down and made my own wreath.... I wasn't going to miss out on all the fun!!

This craft suited both girls, they made their wreaths to suit their age and level. Boo (2.5) glued a little bit of decoration onto a lot of paper plate wreaths. Cakey (4.5) spent more time gluing a lot of decoration onto a few wreaths.

Clockwise: Cakey's wreath, Chris' wreath, my wreath and Boo's wreath

While we waited for the glue to dry, Cakey and I threaded bells onto gold cord. We wanted the bell to dangle in the middle so we punched a hole at the top and taped the cord in place on the back of each wreath. I have displayed them on our mantle piece so Santa can get a good look at them on his way down the chimney.

For more wreath ideas have a look at Easy Toddlers Christmas Wreaths by Mummy Musings and Mayhem.

If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali



Linked to Kids Get Crafty and Tuesday Tots