Make a Christmas Card

We've been getting into the festive spirit with some Christmas makes.

Amelie has been making LOADS of lovely things at preschool, she has come home wanting to carry on making anything Christmasy! Luckily, our Something to Make book has some quick and easy makes for us to create.

This Christmas Card was used to write to Father Christmas with Amelie's wish list (which was... and actually... still is growing by the day).

Our completed Christmas Card

Time taken for us to make: 15 minutes

Cost to me: Nothing

Original instructions

What we used: 

• Card 
• Scissors
• Coloured tissue paper 
• Glue
• Glitter

What we did: 

We started by folding a sheet of card in half ready to be decorated. We then took green tissue paper and folded it a couple of times to make several layers. and cut tree shaped triangles with scissors (we only used a couple of the trees, but you could use them to make more cards).

Cut triangles for a tree design 

Next we got on with our design. We chose to over lap the triangles to create a forest of Christmas trees. To add interest and colour we added red shiny stickers for baubles and glitter to represent snow. 

Glue the paper and glitter to deign your card

To finish we added a 'Happy Christmas' sticker in the bottom corner. 

This was very quick and easy to make, so they are ideal for when you run out of printed cards and suddenly remember you have forgotten to write one to an old neighbour. They'll feel very special thinking the kids have taken the time to make one for them.

Make a Paper Lantern

We have two seasonal 'makes' for you as we are currently embracing Halloween! Amelie is bonkers for it this year - VERY excited, loving the opportunity to dress up, bake themed cakes, carve pumpkins and going 'Trick or Treating' with her friends.

Our patch appears to be more festive at Halloween than at Christmas! It's not unusual for neighbours in most streets to get competitive at Christmas, decorating the outside of their homes in red & green neons and animatronic reindeer. However, at this spooky time of year nearly all of our neighbours dress up the front of their homes with cobwebs and skeletons, light their creatively carved pumpkins in their front gardens and welcome kids and their swag bags. SUGAR FEAST!!! There's quite a party atmosphere with one particular neighbour pulling out all the stops and pumping our spooky tunes from speakers. Christmas on our street is a much more low key affair with just a few fairy lights twinkling on the trees placed in the bay windows. Much more calm and cosy compared to the giddy squeals of children running from door to door shouting "TRICK OR TREAT" as winter takes hold.

To add to our Halloween decorations bought from the finest of purveyors including Poundland & the 99p Store (they do have some great tack), we have made our own Halloween Lanterns.

Our Halloween Paper Lanterns

Time taken for us to make: 45mins

Cost to make: £1.50 - for new glitter pens, we already had paper.

Original Instructions

What we used:

• Glue 
• Coloured paper (A4 size)
• Scissors - We used different types of pinking shears
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Glitter pens

What we did: 

We started by making the handles for our lanterns. Using a ruler we drew lines the width of the ruler and cut along the pencil marks with scissors. 

Draw lines the width of a ruler apart

Cut along the pencil lines with scissors

We then folded a sheet of paper in half, length ways, then marked one edge with a 'stop line' to guide Amelie when to stop cutting as we needed to to snip strips upwards from the fold but not right through.

Fold paper in half, length ways

Draw a 'Stop Line' to mark where to stop cutting on the outside edge. 

Cut strips from the fold upwards to the 'Stop Line'

Now we can decorate! Opening out the paper we then used glitter glue to make patterns on the strips. Once that was complete we glued along one outer edge of a short end to attach the other end making a cylinder. Once the cylinder was complete we glued on the handle.

Decorate the strips 

Glue along on short edge

Stick edge to other end to make a cylinder 

Glue the handle to the top

We now have a some beautiful halloweeny lanterns to decorate our home.

 

Make a Face Montage

To keep with the Halloween theme we have adapted the Face Montage instructions from our Something to Make book to create little monsters.

Our Face Montage Monsters

Time it took to make: 20 minutes (but to cut out the eyes, nose' and mouths took some time!).

Cost to me: Nothing

Original Instructions

What we used:

• Magazines
• Scissors 
• Glue 
• Sheets of coloured paper
• Black felt tip pen 

What we did: 

To start, I sat down one night with a stack of old magazines in front of the telly cutting out eyes, nose' and mouths. This was a bit of a long job. I think it would have bored Amelie so it was best to do it when she was in bed. 

Cut out features from magazines

The original instructions say to glue them all over a piece of paper to make a mixed collection of features. I thought Amelie would enjoy creating funny monster faces more. So I drew three simple monster shapes for Amelie to glue the features onto however she wanted. 

Draw simple monster shapes

We then glued the features onto the paper creating cute funny monster faces. 

Stick down the features with glue

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When complete we cut them out and glued them into our scrape book.

I love these. Amelie had a great fun making them and they are so funny looking they do make me chuckle.

Making Sounds

We'd loved making our own instruments... and making a LOT of noise!!!!

As with most of our 'makes' these instruments can be made out of things already in the home.

Making instruments is a great way to explore sound, volume and how they are both made. You can also talk about rhythm and pace. 

We played around with making the using the instruments for about an hour or two. None of them took long to make or cost any money to create. 

Original Instructions

A Bottle Xylaphone

We used: Milk bottles, water & a paintbrush

We lined the milk bottles in a row and filled them with water a little more in each bottle making a scale. 

Fill bottles with water

Add more water in each bottle

Amelie spent ages playing the Bottle Xylophone using the end of a paint bush as a beater. She loved sweeping the beater along the scale listening to how it changed up in pitch then back down again depending in whether she moved the beater left to right or right to left. We talked about high notes and low notes and used our voices to copy the note being played. 

Maraccas

We used: Plastic bottle & uncooked rice

We hadn't planed to make instruments on this day. A little forward planning would have meant keeping a bottle AND lid! I found the bottle in the recycling bin but no lid so we had to use some fabric to cover the opening of the bottle and secure it with an elastic band - Not ideal, but did the job. 

To make the maracca we simply put rice into the bottle and sealed it. All that is left to do is shake!

Place rice into the bottle

Seal the opening

Very simple and easy to play. We talked about making 'hard sounds' by shaking it fast and 'soft sounds' by tilting it slowly. 

Tin Drum 

We used: A rubber band, a clean empty tin and paintbrush

To make a tin drum we used a baked bean tin. This was OK as we use a can opener which dulls the cut edge making it safer to use. I suggest you use an empty cocoa tin or something similar just to avoid any injuries. We then stretched a rubber band over the opening and base. We then pulled the rubber band at the opening to make a 'plonk' sound. As we used a tin it had small ridges on the side. This made a great scraping sound when the paint brush beater was dragged along it. The beater could also be used to strike the tin to make rhythms. 

"Plonk, plonk, plonk"

Cymbals

What we used: Two saucepan lids

I don't think making cymbals needs any real explanation. It can be summed up in one word 'BANG'!!!

Lastly... Castanets 

What we used: Two teaspoons

This was a little fiddly so a good exercise for those fine motor skills. We placed the two spoons together, one sitting in the other then holding the handles in one hand beat it against the palm of the opposite hand. We chose to use teaspoons but you could use two wooden spoons to beat together. 

There you have it 'Making Sounds'! This will be a great group activity with other kids playing along to some choice tunes. If you are able to record their noises (or film them) and play it back to them, their fascination and appreciation will deepen. 

Make a Paper Necklace

Hello Readers, We're back after a break... Did you miss us? I hope you have been enjoying 'making' in our absence. We've enjoyed a family holiday in sunny Cornwall and my little sisters wedding in the beautiful city of Prague. We've had an amazing few weeks but it has left very little time for making and even less time with my laptop writing posts. But, we are back to our usual routine now and ready to get creative.

This post is about making paper necklaces. This was a hit with Amelie, she does love her bling!! But boys too will enjoy this 'make' creating a Paper Necklace either for themselves or their Mum, Nanna or favourite teacher.

Amelie & I modelling our paper necklace & bracelet

I fear that you may find me repeating myself during my blog posts. But it is always worth mentioning the benefits of 'making'. Many of the pieces we create help develop fine motor skills, essential for correctly holding and controlling a pencil, using scissors and playing musical instruments. Threading beads onto string is a simple and effective way to exercise hand-eye coordination and, in turn, fine tuning your child's fine motor skills. 

Time taken for us to make: 45 mins

Cost to me: Nothing

Original Instructions

What we used: 

• Different paper 
• Glue stick
• Pencils
• Scissors 
• Paints 
• Small paint brush 
• Wool 

What we did:

We gathered different types of paper. Some were coloured sheetsof plain paper, others were torn from magazines, a yellow pages and a phone directory. We then cut the paper into squares approximately 6 ins x 6 ins then rolled each sheet fairly loosely around different pencils then fixed then end edge with glue. 

A selection of paper 

Roll the paper around the pencil and glue the edge to fix

.

When the glue was dry we then slid the pencils out of the paper tubes. Using scissors we cut the tube into approximately 1cm beads. Amelie loves painting anything small so we used the white beads to paint different colours and left them to dry. 

Cut the tube into beads

Completed beads

Paint the white beads

We were then ready to thread our beads onto the wool. The holes in the beads are big enough to thread wool fairly easily, but to help Amelie along we used a plastic needle. We tied the first bead to the end of the wool leaving enough wool to tie the ends together when the necklace is complete.

Tie the first bead to the wool

Thread the beads

Keep adding beads

When all the beads were added we tied the ends together. 

The necklace was then complete and ready to be worn with pride. We also had enough beads to make me a bracelet. These are a great addition to any fancy dress box or made for a specific occasion. They could be colour themed to suit. For example, with Halloween approaching they could be made with orange, green and black.