This is the world’s easiest craft activity. I showed AJ how to do this the other day and what took me two minutes to demonstrate, occupied her for an enormous amount of time.

You will need:
Paper
White crayon
Water colour paints
Jar of water
Brushes

It’s as simple as this - draw a picture or write a message in white crayon on to white paper and then paint over the design to reveal it. For little kids, it’s really just like magic.
AJ particularly liked it when it became part of a game - secret messages were revealed (this one above is a love letter) or guesses were made. Below you can see the result of “Why is the little girl cross?” paint, paint, paint reveal: “Because she forgot to put the raisin eyes on the gingerbread men!”. My attempt is in the top right corner of the picture; “Why is the little fish so happy?”, paint and reveal; “Because his Mummy just arrived to pick him up from fishy kinder”.

There’s a lovely post over on whipup about creating more detailed wax resist paintings using coloured crayons to great effect.

From the Australian Women’s Weekly. Published by ACP Magazines Ltd.

Kath here from whipup doing some Kiddley stuff.

I was really excited to see that this classic has been reprinted. The Best of Children’s Art & Crafts is a fabulous collection of craft activities for kids aged 2-8 - parents too. Step by step instructions designed to stimulate imagination and confidence assist with coordination, concentration and problem solving and to encourage experimentation. Good instructions with easy recipes and hints on cleaning up, excellent photos of real kids making these projects.

The projects themselves really range from fun, messy and sensory to the more complex creative projects. But the really good thing is that even the more difficult projects have different levels suitable for younger ones and the easy projects can be taken to higher levels if needed.

For example this finger painting recipe and instructions which is also available online on the women’s weekly website.

Some other projects that will be keeping our family busy during the upcoming holiday season include:
- fingerprint drawings (turning finger prints into animals, people and other characters)

- blot painting (fold a piece of paper in half, open in up and blob on some paint, then fold the paper back together and press it around, then open it to discover the painting)

- marbling (trays of water with coloured ink gently swirled around on the surface, lay a piece of paper on top and then lift it up again and see the marbled design)

- play dough printing (make shapes from playdough, press them into paint and then use them to make a design)

- printing from other objects such as leaves, fish and old kitchen utensils

- paper dyeing (using absorbant paper folded a few times, dip the corners into food colouring mixed with water and open it to see the design it makes)

- box sculptures (using tissue boxes, toilet paper rolls etc paint and glue and tape them together to make all sort of things)

- peg people and rock creatures (paint and decorated pegs and river stones to make fun creatures and characters)

- nature weaving (make a frame from sticks and string and then thread leaves and flowers in and out of the strings).

I think we should definitely make some slime and some goop for some messy outdoor play, and when it rains we will try our hand at leaf rubbings and some sock hand puppets. There are tons more ideas in here, most of which involve recycled materials or household objects and DIY materials such as making your own non toxic paints and glue. An excellent book with projects for years to come.

You can find Kathreen over at her glorious group blog whipup. Thanks Kath!

This is a quick update to let you know how our mantel village is coming along. Here is our first cardboard house - a work in progress - as it still needs stuff stuck all over it (glitter, stars, origami paper scraps etc) to bring it to it’s full potential. I just want to warn you that ruling up and cutting out the houses from cardboard takes a bit of time, so this might be best done in advance, not while you have a small child champing at your side saying “How much longer? COME ON MUM!”.

Also, Tobey kindly pointed out yesterday in the comments that you can find a full set of instructions for a cardboard village on HGTV’s site.

I have been admiring photos of little model christmas villages for a while now. There’s nothing more incongruous than creating a snowy, wintry scene on an Australian mantel piece in the middle of a heat wave, but that’s what we may be doing this year.

Blair’s scene from last year (above) has stuck in my mind, and perhaps one day I will find some time to create something half as beautiful, delicate and detailed as this tiny village. This year, however, we are taking some inspiration from Noriko Takahashi’s lovely simple houses (via. Molly Chicken).

Using the dimensions for the larger sized model, I am going to cut out four houses from thick card, glue them together and then let AJ decorate them to her hear’s content. We’ll be using stuff including paint, glitter, star stickers, bits cut from old Christmas cards, fake flowers and so on. After they are finished I am going to place them on the mantel piece with a string of Christmas lights run through them to illuminate them, and hopefully it will all look smashing. They might end up looking a little bit like a row of beach boxes but perhaps that is a suitably Southern Hemisphere kind of Christmas scene. I will have to keep you posted as I started cutting out the houses late yesterday afternoon from foam core and maybe my knife isn’t so good, but I found it to be incredibly difficult. I am off today to get some card instead.

Once again, thank you to those who uploaded photos for last week’s Kiddley Photo Theme “My Favourite Things”.

Pictured above is Mari’s beautiful photo of some of her plastic animals; “I put a chair behind the camera (on tripod), plonked her box of animals on the table and left her to it.”.

This week’s new theme is “Shiny“.

Encourage your kids to take photos with the theme in mind and then upload them to the Kiddley Flickr group.

Don’t forget to check out Phil’s Introducing your kids to digital photography for some tips and ideas.

Kiddley reader Barbara wrote in to let us know about Reverse Garbage co-ops. Reverse Garbage collects high quality industrial materials that would otherwise end up as landfill and sells them at a low price to the general public. The Marrikville co-op in NSW collects the equivalent of one swimming pool in volume of material every week. Reverse Garbage can be a boon for artists, tinkerers, and makers, and as Barbara notes, it’s an excellent place to source materials for kid-craft.

Burke’s Backyard has a listing of Reverse Garbage co-ops around Australia and the Brisbane co-op will mail barrels of material around the country. For readers outside of Australia, do you have similar co-op schemes where you are? If so, let us know in the comments so that others in your area can find out about them.

At the moment we’re reading bits of the Moomintroll stories before bed, and they are quickly becoming family favourites. I thought I’d share some of the other books which have been bedtime reading hits with AJ over the last couple of years.

Shout Daisy Shout is a board book that we started reading to AJ when she was just 3 months old. She responded to the dramatic moments in the story right away and she still loved it well into her first year.

I Like It When by Mary Murphy is another really lovely book for very little ones; it’s got lots of repetition and bright pictures.

The Pear in the Pear Tree by Pamela Allen is a wonderful rhyming story about 2 kids trying to get a pear out of a pear tree. Plenty of Pamela Allen’s other books are available internationally, but this one only seems to be available in Australia and New Zealand.

The Milly-Molly-Mandy books by Joyce Lankester Brisley are from the 1920s and they are quaintly simple stories about a girl and her friends and the adventures they have in a country town. The copies of the books that we have are from the 1970s and feature adorable minimal illustrations.

Little Lit is a hip collection of stories edited by Art Spiegelman and featuring stories written and illustrated by the likes of Daniel Clowes and William Joyce. Little Lit has stories about witches, ogres and magic spells and is definitely for slightly older kids.

What are your favourites?

It’s time to start making Christmas cards so that they are ready to be mailed out in time for the holidays.

Things to remember when making Holiday cards with your kids:
1) If you have a lot of relatives and friends, mass production is an important factor. While it would be nice to give everyone a specially designed and created unique card, it isn’t always practical. Think about stencils, stamps and printing to help things move along quickly.

2) Keep your cards to a standard postage size otherwise you may find yourself shelling out a lot more than you expected at the post office.

3) If you are creating collaged cards made with things from nature, and you want to send them overseas, check international quarantine laws about posting plant matter.

Here are some great ideas for making Christmas cards with your kids from around the web:

Better Homes and Gardens shows us how to do make these ornament inspired collage cards:

While this following card looks a little generic, I can imagine that if you got your kids making it, with some colourful start stickers, using their own handwriting for the “Merry Christmas” you would have a very quick and appealing card. Potentially a good one for mass production:

Here is a simple way to create an embossed christmas tree for the front of your cards:

And also from Familyfun.com is this idea for reproducing a collection of your kids’ artwork on to one card:

Some other resources:

One million combination ideas for making Christmas cards.

Pictures to print out and use as part of your cards

Martha Stewart’s list of Christmas cards and tags projects.

This is a short and sweet idea great for little kids who are learning the basics of colour theory. It was inspired by a suggestion made months ago by Kiddley reader Suz.
Pour some water into an ice-cube tray and then add a couple of drops of food colouring to each cube.

Freeze the ice cubes until they are solid. You will notice that once you have done this the colour will freeze around the centre of the cube.

When your kids need a little distracting (we did this one night at the dinner table when dinner was a little slow in coming) place two of the cubes in a glass of warm water. Place the glass on a piece of white paper in the centre of the table.

Your kids will have fun theorising what colour will be made as the cubes melt and mix.

Once again, thank you to those who uploaded photos for last week’s Kiddley Photo Theme “Spooktacular!”.

Pictured above is James’ great snap of a couple of Halloween jack-o-lanterns.

This week’s new theme is “My Favourite Things”.

Encourage your kids to take photos with the theme in mind and then upload them to the Kiddley Flickr group.

Don’t forget to check out Phil’s Introducing your kids to digital photography for some tips and ideas.