Craft Stick Dolls

5 year old

2 year old

Materials:

• 2 craft sticks
• White craft glue
• Black kokie
• Wool
• Scissors
• Cupcake liner
• Coloured pencils
• Flesh coloured card 

Method:

1. Flatten out the cupcake liner and colour it in.
2. Fold the cupcake liner in half twice to make a small triangle.
3. Use craft glue to stick the triangle onto one of the craft sticks to make a dress.
4. Cut out a circle from the coloured card.
5. Use the black kokie to draw a face.
6. Cut some wool for the hair.
7. Use the craft glue to stick the wool onto the head.
8. Stick the head onto the other craft stick.
9. Stick the craft stick with the dress on, on top of the other craft stick cross ways to create a doll.

Paper Plate Handbag

Materials:

• Paper plate
• Pink paint
• Pink wool
• Hole punch

Method:

1. Paint the top side of the paper plate pink.
2. Once dried, punch holes around the plate.
3. Fold the plate in half so that the pink is on the outside. Try match the holes but it is not serious if they are out of sync.
4. Thread the pink wool through the holes "sewing" the 2 sides of the plate together.
5. Leave some wool at the top to be able to tie into a handle.

Washline Clothing Theme

I used this activity when I was doing my Seasons theme.

Materials:

• 2 A4 pieces of white cardboard paper
• 2 pieces of string
• Wooden pegs (I used 13)
• Cellotape
• Felt in a variety of colours
• Scissors

Method:

1. Cut out a variety of winter and summer clothing from the different coloured felt. For winter, I cut out trousers, mittens, long sleeve shirt, sock, hoodie, boot, wooly hat and a scarf. For summer, I cut out a swimming costume, a t-shirt, shorts, a cap and a slip slop.
2. Cut to pieces of string long enough to go from one side of the paper to the other with a slight dip.
3. Cellotape the pegs into place.
4. Peg the clothing onto the correct pages (Winter and Summer).
5. A more interactive way of doing this, is to put all the cut-outs into a pile and get your children to sort out which are summer items and which are winter items and peg them up themselves.

Clothes Theme - Dinosaur Style!!

Dinosaurs are an absolute favourite for Christopher, the little 2.5 year old Slovakian boy I teach 3 times a week. To get him to do anything, I have to incorporate some sort of dinosaur into the mix!! (Please keep in mind that these designs were out of the head of a 2.5 year old!!)

Age Group: 2 years (with help) to 6 years
Estimated Time: Under 30 minutes
Messiness: High

Materials:

• Paper plate
• Poster paint
• Coloured cardboard paper
• White cardboard paper
• Big pom-pom
• 2 googly eyes
• Tissue paper cut into small squares
• Shredded tissue paper
• Scissors
• White craft glue
• Pritt glue

Method:

1. Paint the paper plate any colour of your choice.
2. Whilst the paper plate is drying, cut out the dinosaur's arms and legs. Christopher wanted very BIG feet with 3 pointy toes and very small arms with 3 pointy fingers - sort of like a T-Rex. As he is still too small to cut out fine details, I did the cutting for him.
3. I then cut out the teeth. He wanted 4, big, sharp teeth for his dinosaur.
4. We then moved onto the clothing part of the lesson. I drew a beanie sort of hat and cut it out.
5. Christopher chose orange tissue paper for the bottom part of the beanie. He glued these small squares (which I had pre-cut) onto the card with normal Pritt glue.
6. He then chose the colour of the "wool" (shredded tissue paper) he wanted to use on the hat. This we stuck down with white craft glue.
7. He then chose the biggest pom-pom I had to glue onto the top of the hat - also with craft glue.
8. Once the paper plate was dry, we stuck everything into place with craft glue.
9. Lastly, we stuck on the googly eyes (also craft glue)

Age Group: 3 years (with help) to 6 years
Estimated Time: Under 30 minutes
Messiness: High

Materials:

• 2 paper plates
• A variety of poster paints
• 4 A4 sheets of coloured cardboard paper
• White cardboard paper
• 3 big pom-poms
• 2 cupcake liners
• 2 large pieces of felt
• 1 pipe cleaner
• Scissors
• White craft glue
• Black kokie

Method:

1. The theme for this lesson was "shoes" but Christopher, of course, insisted on making a dinosaur - so I decided to compromise and we made the dinosaur with shoes!
2. We started by painting the 2 paper plates in different colours and put them aside to dry.
3. We then painted 2 A4 cardboard sheets one colour and the other 2 another colour, as we used 1 sheet for each arm and each leg.
4. Whilst those were drying, Christopher chose 2 different coloured pieces of felt and I cut out a very simple shoe pattern. As Christopher had decided that his dinosaur needed very BIG feet, I had to cut out very BIG shoes.
5. We then cut a pipe cleaner in half and bent each half into a heart shape to resemble laces.
6. We stuck the "laces" onto the "shoes" with white craft glue - you have to hold the pipe cleaners in place whilst the glue dries (about 2 minutes), otherwise they will not stick.
7. I then used the black kokie to draw large dots onto each cupcake liner to make big eyes.
8. I cut out triangular teeth from the white card.
9. Once all was dry, we stuck it all together using white craft glue.
10. It was quite tricky sticking the cupcake liners down without squashing them flat by mistake! But after a few attempts, we managed.
11. Christopher chose where to put the feet and arms, and thus, we ended up with feet on the one side and arms on the other!