This one is an old favourite but sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of the obvious. Making a chain of paper dolls is a quick and easy craft activity but you may be surprised at how entertaining kids can find it and how a whole afternoon can disappear in this pursuit.

You will need:
Light cardboard or sturdy paper
Scissors
Pens, markers and crayons
Decorative materials such as scraps of paper and fabric, buttons, lace, trim, glitter, tin-foil, stickers, sequins etc.
Glue

Cut a strip of paper about 10 cm high and as long as you like. The longer the strip, the more dolls you will end up with.

Fold the strip of paper accordion style, making each panel about 6cm or so wide

Your (older) child can draw a figure on the top panel making sure that parts of the body (hands, feet etc) touch the sides of the panel.

Cut around the figure but don’t cut along the folds where the parts of the body touch.

Unfold the chain of dolls and then decorate with either just markers and crayons or use glue and stick on all sorts of wondrous outfits.

Older children will be quite capable of drawing their own shape on the top panel. Preschoolers may need you to draw the figure and cut out the shape but will have plenty of fun unfolding the chain and then decorating it once you are done.

Tip: A great idea is to do a little preparation before hand. Gather a bunch of fabric scraps and then cut them into little squares with pinking shears.

This makes it easy for especially little kids to create all kinds of different outfits for their dolls using the pre-cut scraps. (idea borrowed from Caroline Zoob’s Childhood Treasures book).

Strings of paper dolls can also be used for cute folded birthday party invitations which would be especially nice if you can get the guest of honour to decorate all the sets personally – perhaps a big ask. Stick them around a plain paper lampshade and you immediately add colour and fun. You could also Hang them as a mobile, or stick them to the outside of a bedroom door and use them as a name plate – one letter of the child’s name could be pasted or drawn on to each doll’s dress or stomach.

We have a page of downloadable templates for you to print out to get you started. This includes the classic doll shape (above), an alien (above), a fairy and a grizzly monster.

Paper doll pdf

Aren’t these great? This image is from an old copy of Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion (August / September 2004). Vintage or new plastic buttons twisted on to strands of florist’s wire make a quirky and easy to construct boquet. We managed to pick up a couple of jars of old buttons cheaply in an antique store, though I know you can buy bags of cheap colourful buttons at most habedashery or craft stores (or try ebay) — these don’t have to be anything special, just various colours and various sizes. Here are the basic instructions at PBS Kid’s site. Here are some of my basic instructions for multi-tiered stems with very dodgey photos on a grey day:

You will need:
Buttons
Pliers (optional – depending on the thickness of your wire)
Mid weight florist wire in 30cm+ lengths (I had to buy several different thicknesses before I found the right kind)
A small glass bottle or vase

1. Thread the first button onto the wire, then twist the wire back through a second hole in the button.

2. Thread another button on and then twist the wire underneath so that they stay in place.

3. Add more groupings of buttons and twist underneath each.

4. Place stems in a vase and arrange!

Thomas, who lives in the Yarnstorm household, spent some time over the weekend making packaging for some delicious looking ginger biscuits. I’m not completely sure if the ginger biscuits are homemade, but knowing Jans’s extensive baking category, I would guess so. We love the idea so much we made a quick tutorial as we think this could be a great gift idea:

You will need:
Delicious homemade or store bought biscuits/cookies
A cardboard box
Paper to cover the box surfaces
Pencils or watercolours
Felt tip pen
Scissors
Glue

Carefully trace the surfaces of the box onto the paper and cut out. Find some ideas from a conventional biscuit box but then, like Thomas, give it an imaginative and personal twist. Develop your own name for the biscuits, logo, list of ingredients, attractive top to the box, and tempting copy. Glue paper to the box sides and package up you biscuits. Easy!

Thanks Jane and Thomas for some inspiration this morning.

If you have a child who loves playdough, then it might be worth investing in some good playdough equipment.

Firstly, there’s Clay Play which includes four textured rolling pins, one smooth rolling pin, four patterned clay mallets, four double-ended wooden modeling tools, a rolling wheel cutter and six sticks of modeling clay – international shipping from the US is available over the phone. (via mighty goods)

And you could also indulge the junior cookie maker with a set of 100 plastic cookie cutters which includes numbers, letters, geometric forms, animals, plants, vehicles, seasonal shapes and other miscellaneous goodness

But of course, there is always the el-cheapo version which we go for around here — buttons and matchsticks!

which are incredibly versatile. Here, for example, they are being used to help make a dog:

Uh-huh. And here they are being used to make an army of martians in battle with an army of Venusians:

We had some green potatoes in the cupboard so before throwing them away we thought we would turn them into potato people.

You will need:
A parent or carer to supervise little ones
Washed potatoes
Buttons
Facial features cut from magazines
Tissue paper or wool for hair
Tooth picks or matchsticks
Pins (sewing pins with round heads are best, but if your littlies are too little just use glue or tape)
Then it’s just a matter of using the pins to attach the buttons and bits of paper and poking in the matchsticks for limbs. Suprisingly entertaining for a very simple activity.

The Senior Education Officer at the National Gallery of Victoria has written a fun check list for kids to take with them to the gallery. The idea is that this will encourage littlies to explore and think about the collection. While written up for the NGV here in Australia it could be used in any general collection gallery in the world – the only Australianism I found is the use of the word “bush” which you might need to replace with “forest”, “wilderness”, “woods” etc depending on your part of the world.

also: tips for parents visiting with young children

While Élena of French Toast Girl may have been primarily thinking that fellow adult artists may leap at her idea to challenge themselves to paint something Every Day in May, there is no reason why this great idea for a project can’t be undertaken by kids as well. It might be fun to set up your child’s easel and/or paints in an easy to access place like the kitchen for the month and see where it goes from there – messy most likely, but ease of access and the encouragement to try something every day might bring out some inspired artwork or just lots of good fun. Join the flickr group to share images.