Yes, this is a pom-pom made from the french knitting kit I mentioned the other day. I’m not overly thrilled with it, because of the technique used to wind the wool on:
Having made pom poms in the past the old fashioned way (winding yarn around cardboard circles with a hole in the centre), Missy 10 and I both thought this would be much easier. It was, but we didn’t like the effect as much as how it turns out doing it the old fashioned way. There was a lot of trimming needed afterward to make it look circular, and we didn’t like how the tied-up centre turned out, either. It didn’t seem as secure. Violet Le Beaux recently made heart shaped pom poms by wrapping the yarn around something rectangular with great results, so it could be a personal preference thing. I’m determined to make some of her cute heart pom poms very soon though, I think they’d look awesome on the end of some beanie ties!
This is a great activity if you have a child who’d like to dabble in wool/yarn craft, but isnt yet confident/interested in learning to knit or crochet. It still provides yet another opportunity to work the fine motor muscles and to problem-solve. It can be pretty tricky cutting those loops of wool, so a child will have to dig deeper than using just average scissor skills! They won’t be able to cut all that yarn in one hit, and will have to learn other ways to do it, such as snipping just a little wool at a time.
Making pom poms with children also encourages them to concentrate on this task for a longer period than many other activities this generation likes to do. I think it’s good to involve children in activities which don’t necessarily provide instant gratification in a matter of minutes. As with most wool crafts, school aged children are given a chance to lengthen their attention span and to learn about patience.
When Missy 10 made her pom poms, she quickly learned that although it’s a simple project, these make great gifts. She made a toy for Sookie the cat, and we both gave some pom poms to Missy 3 to play with. She was over the moon to be able to carry them around and cuddle them. Missy 10 did attempt to decorate one pom-pom into a toy character, but unfortunately, Sookie tore it apart within seconds of its completion. In time, we’ll make more pom-poms, and show a bunch of cool things kids can make either for themselves or others.
In future, I’m thinking we’ll buy one of those plastic versions of the cardboard circles, as a compromise. It’s tedious cutting out cardboard every single time, after all.
This is the perfect weather in Australia to be snuggling up, making pom-poms. I have fond memories of making them as a child, and making funny toys out of them. What did you do with pom-poms when you were a child?
School holidays ended this week (sob!). Missy 10 kept herself busy these holidays with plenty of craft, which she loves. A few weeks prior to the holidays, I was in Big W and found this cute kit for roughly six bucks, so I made a point of grabbing it in advance (it was in the knitting section).
These are also sometimes called a ‘knitting nancy’. We thought this one looked really cute. It also came with a bonus pom-pom maker, which I’ll write another post on shortly.
This is a simple, cheap and fun activity for school aged children. It’s more of a structured activity than a creative one, but let’s face it, school-aged kids are ready and able to learn crafting techniques at this age, and enjoying mastering them. Once mastery is gained, creativity can come into play if the child chooses. They could use the cords created for decoration, for example on knitted toys (the post I’ve linked to wasn’t decorated with french knitting, I instead used i-cords, which looks very similar to french knitting and could be used in the same way), as ties on beanies or other clothing.
Kids are attracted to this craft for the fun, but they get so much more out of it than they realise (or need to know):
- This activity is highly cognitive, as they try to remember the steps in the sequence of french knitting. Kids are challenged to use trial and error, experimentation and problem solving, just to get the little loops over the spikes! Are they pulling the yarn too tightly? Is it too loose? Your child will be encouraged to reflect on the consequences of every attempt they make to get this to work, and tweak the way they try it on each next attempt.
- Eye-hand co-ordination is challenged quite a bit, as they really need to look at what they’re doing to make their own hands match what their eyes can see!
- Because this is very fine, close work compared to preschooler craft, it helps children to become more skilled at using their hands, strengthening them at the same time.
- It’s a beautiful way for parents or grandparents to spend with the kids in their life. I don’t think this generation values this sort of interaction as much as previous generations.
So many families are obsessed with filling each day up with play dates, extracurricular activities and so on. Whatever happened to spending time with the adults in a child’s life, learning new things with them? I love that when I craft with my daughter, it’s a perfect opportunity for her and I to slow down, de-stress and reconnect. I’m all too aware that soon she’ll be a teen. I’m all too aware that she spends so much time at school, and less time with her dad and I as a result.
I think once our kids start school, it’s so easy to let that time together slide and for parents to become disconnected from their children. We need, as a society, to re-claim that bond with our children. What better way to do that than by teaching them new things? And please, if you’re reading this, and you and/or your child aren’t crafty, don’t think that’s that’s the only way to spend time and connect with your school-aged child. I’ll be talking about lots of ways we can keep that bond alive with our older kids very soon.
Did you french knit as a kid? Did you have a wooden cotton spool with four nails bunged into the top, or did you have a store bought ‘knitting nancy’?
I love doing coloured window art with young kids. It’s easy, yet something out of the ordinary for them. I find it holds their interest for ages. As you can see, all I’ve done is cut up some collage-type materials for the children; today it was fabric scraps. Other times, I’ve given the children flattened cup cake cases, confetti from the hole punch, chopped wool scraps, chopped streamers, basically whatever I’ve had lying around. It’s also important to make sure nothing would be a choking hazard for your kids. I’m lucky in that my kids are past the stage of putting craft/art items in their mouths, but if you know yours will (it’s the under 3′s we need to be careful with, generally), simply use bigger, safer pieces and supervise.
Then, I provide the kids with a sheet of clear contact with the adhesive side facing upward. I turn each corner underneath to stick it to the table. Now all the kids need to is to stick their collage pieces on to their hearts’ content. Once they finished each masterpiece, I stuck it to the window for them.
…Until the kids decided to do it for themselves.
I love that this is an open-ended activity that doesn’t add any pressure to look like anything in particular. However, if you keep the backing sheet from the contact you’ve cut for your child, you can stick the finished piece back onto the backing paper. This lets a child take their art work home, or give it to their grandparents as a very special gift. Once it’s in its new home, it can still be proudly displayed on a window.
This is a great time of year to be doing this activity too, because I find after doing back to school shopping, I have loads of contact to spare.
Remember yesterday, when I mentioned Missy 10 was knitting something special to her? Well, here’s the end result! (Well, part of it, actually. She still wants to glue a felt shell and tail onto the back) In case you can’t make out what this is, it’s a finger puppet of a Pokemon character named Squirtle. Yes, she’s obsessed with Pokemon…
She knitted this up in 8 ply acrylic yarn, on 4mm knitting needles. She started off with ten stitches, and just worked a rectangle until it was the length to fit her finger. She ran a needle through the stitches on the needle, then gathered them. She learned that this is how fingers on gloves are often finished off. I showed her how to fold the rectangle in half and sew the seam. Next time, it’ll be her turn to attempt it. Then, to customise her character, she made up some felt shapes, drew some detail onto them then glued them onto the puppet with craft glue. It was very simple, but she thrived on the creative process; deciding what she wanted the puppet to become, designing the features, and fiddling around putting them on.
I also gave her a fabric marker pen to work with before she cut the felt shapes out. This lets her erase what she felt were mistakes, with a wet cloth. I also taught her not to use hot water to do this, as this can set the ink into a stain. The great thing about fabric markers is that the ink on the fabric eventually becomes invisible anyway. It lets the work turn out a lot less grubby-looking than drawing on the fabric with a lead pencil.
I also looked through my own knitting stash, and have put together small stash to start her out with. Some balls of acrylic yarns, a knitting needle measuring gadget (great if you have a pair of needles where the size has worn off, but the needles themselves still work well), tape measure and some knitting needles. All of these things I already had, and either wasn’t planning on using or I already had duplicates of certain items. She was psyched!
We’ve decided to make our knitting together a one hour a day (minimum!) date. It’s nice to knit with someone who shares your interest, and both of us can’t stop chatting excitedly about all our ideas, and about knitting in general. We talk about what high school would be like, events in the past and her feelings on them, her friends, pretty much whatever she wants! Also, as my stress as a carer has really heated up lately, my carer support counselor has been driving home to me the urgent need for me to ensure I give myself self-care, or as it’s more widely known, me time.
I know me time should probably not be spent with my offspring, but if it makes me happy and relaxed, then honestly, why not? I’m very blessed to have the sort of child that even when I need down time, I choose to spend it with her.
She’s interested in making a scarf, next. She’s also looking forward to playing with her new puppet once the glues dries, and decorating her room with it. It’s also something fun we can make for Missy 2 and Mr 4. They love imaginative play, so these will be excellent homemade toys to nurture that.
Can you think of other handmade toys your school-child or you can make?
In Australia, we’re in the last weeks of the Summer holidays. It’s been fun, but now everyone’s getting a bit tetchy. Few of us have unlimited funds to do ridiculously exciting outings everyday, but it’s becoming clear before the kids get on each others’ (and our!) nerves, that they need something to do.
This is I why I think it’s great to teach school-aged kids how to knit. Missy 10 already knew the basics of it, but because she’s usually so busy with school, doesn’t get enough time to practice. What better time to have a go, than during school holidays? Our kids have hours and hours of time on their hands, and whilst it’s a great time to play and relax, sometimes kids don’t know what to do with so much spare time.
Knitting is also really cheap to get started with. Sure, you can spend a lot of money on beautiful wools down the track, but for beginners, cheap is best anyway. And to be honest, for the amount of time spent concentrating and being quiet (oh yes, I went there!) I’d say it’s a damn solid investment.
Even for my own knitting, I like to be relatively frugal. I use knitting needles that have either been handed down to me, and if I don’t have a certain size, nine times out of ten I can source them at the op shop or ebay for a dollar or two. I prefer old knitting needles anyway; to me they feel like there is magic in them. I can picture the ladies before me working on their projects, and feel as though I’m extending the continuum. Any money I save here allows me to buy high quality wools and yarns. I believe once you’re an established knitter, you deserve only the best materials.
I also have been able to to source many patterns for free on the internet, or for a couple of dollars. Ravelry and Knitty are my two favourite resources for knitting. There are also some great, easy knitting patterns for kids online. When I was nine, I became obsessed with knitting! I started out by reading beginners’ knitting books, and doing the projects in there. Basically, once your child can knit, there’s no reason for them not to start out on any beginner pattern that catches their eye. I also used to enjoy designing and knitting clothes for my toys.
Another great thing kids can do once they’ve mastered the basics of knitting is to attempt sampler squares of different patterns, such as stockinette stitch, moss stitch and ribbing. If your child enjoys the mastery of a computer game, there’s a fair chance they’ll get a kick out of a challenge like this too!
Ok, so knitting is cheap and enjoyable for kids. What are some of the direct benefits for the child?
- Knitting builds fine motor strength
- It challenges their eye-hand co-ordination
- It gives them great spatial awareness
- It is a great cognitive (intellect) building activity
- It encourages children to think in mathematical terms. Don’t believe me? Try knitting a pattern from a graph, or attempting a sampler pattern!
- Knitting is a great way for children to explore a new material. They learn about how fabrics can be made, the way they interlock together. They learn about how different sized needles, and different wool/yarn thicknesses affect the work they’re doing. They learn by working with the yarn and feeling it for long periods, the different properties of different fibres. For example, working with mohair is an entirely different experience to working with pure wool. Cotton doesn’t stretch very much, acrylic yarns don’t stay nice for very long, and so on.
- Knitting gives children a challenge and a purpose.
- Knitting gives children with a taste for fashion an outlet to channel it towards.
- It encourages children to have patience, and to work towards a goal.
- It keeps them quiet for hours!
So, how does one start out teaching their child to knit? I like to grab some 8 ply acrylic yarn (I usually can’t stand this stuff, but it’s perfect for learning on), and the needles in the size that complements the yarn (check the label for suggestions). I make sure I do it when I have a lot of time. Knitting with a child is a bonding experience, and not something to be rushed. It should be pleasurable.
It’s best at the first learning attempt for the grown-up to cast on the stitches and work one or two rows. This enables the work some more elasticity, which in turn makes the learning process less awkward. My Gram taught me to knit, by teaching me to recite as I worked, ‘in, round, under, off’ throughout the process of knitting one stitch. When you’re teaching a child to knit, a lot of this is repetition based, and takes a lot of practise. I’ve found it helped if I worked on a garter stitch sampler at the same time, (when my daughter was just starting out) so my daughter can look over my shoulder and see the ‘flow’ of the process.
As your child becomes more used to working with the needles and yarn, they’ll develop a comfortable habit in how they hold both. They will get their own little flow going! Knitting is a great confidence builder, too. What I love about it, is that a child can follow a pattern to learn the skill, or to make a certain, wanted project, or they can create something entirely original, if that is their wish. It can be as structured or open-ended as they choose! My motto with knitting is, build the skills first, then you can create anything later.
My daughter is really keen to learn more about knitting now, so we’ll be building up a cheap but nice stash for her. She’s really excited about this! You’ll be able to find out in a few days, what exactly it is she’s knitting!
If you don’t or can’t knit, why not consider asking a relative or friend who can, to teach your child? Do you or any of your children knit? Why not start with your child these holidays?
Missy 9 made this beautiful butterfly. Playdough appeals to all ages.
Home playdough is special. There’s no denying it. Sure, it’s fun for kids to play with the store-bought stuff, but there’s nothing like the smell of freshly cooked playdough to bring back fond childhood memories. When I smell it, I remember our old Playgroup hall and I can hear the noisy feet of my peers echoing on the floorboards. I hear table legs screeching as mums drag them away from the walls and set them up for us to play happily at.
What I love about making playdough yourself is that you get so much more to play with than what you’d buy in a lousy, plastic playdough can. It’s also great that it costs next to nothing to make. Playdough brings many benefits to the child, apart from being messy, good fun.
Playdough helps children to:
- strengthen and develop fine motor skills (use of hands)
- engage in creative play
- play dramatically, as they make up stories about what they’re making. It’s common to hear children making up pretend voices of their creations’ characters.
- develop their cognitive skills. Children use trial and error, cause and effect and basic experimentation to manipulate the dough into what they want it to do. They learn to problem solve.
- further develop their language. Children love to talk about what they are doing with their sculptures, and this in turn allows them to socialise with other children or adults.
- experiment with different tools and learn about how they work.
- watch how colours change when they are mixed together
How to cook playdough
You will need:
4 cups of water
4 tablespoons of cooking oil
4 cups of plain flour
8 tablespoons of cream of tartar powder
2 cups of salt
Dump all the ingredients into a large saucepan or frypan. I like this gigantic non stick electric frypan, because it’s less likely to spill over. Before you turn the heat on, mix it well. It should look like this:
Turn the heat on to medium-low (my frypan heats up very rapidly, so I have to watch this. You don’t want it to burn or develop a crust along the bottom). It will start to thicken and look lumpy. This is normal.
Now, just stir constantly until it is a lovely, firm playdough consistency. Put it aside to cool before adding any goodies to it.
Once it’s cool, there’s so many things you can add to your playdough. Kool Aid can be used to colour it, or food colouring. You can even try beetroot or spinach juice if you and your kids are feeling experimental!
But don’t feel that you have to stop at colour. Sight is just one of our senses. Why not appeal to your child’s sense of touch, with some glitter shaken in, or some coloured rice? To colour the rice before adding it, shake some rice and food colouring together in a jar and spread it out to dry before adding it. It looks best if the playdough colour is a contrast to the colour of the rice. Below is red and yellow food colouring added to rice.
It looks pretty, but children enjoy the granular sensation, and they notice a difference when flattening it with a rolling pin, or cutting it with a knife or a cookie cutter. This in turn often leads to much discussion! Why not throw some hundreds and thousands in for a mighty crunch? Then the children can watch the colours blend.
And what of our sense of smell? I’ve already mentioned how pleasurable the smell of playdough can be for a child (or adult. Ahem), so play around with that, if you will. You could make coffee playdough, mint scented playdough, just look around your kitchen and garden to see what you have.
The batch in the picture below has been mixed with Kool Aid and coffee, to encourage the children to experiment with different smells. We have cherry flavour, grape, tamarindo, lime, and raspberry. This cooked playdough recipe makes a large amount, so it’s excellent if you want a large variety of playdough types, or have a lot of kids using it either at home, playgroup or daycare.
Uncooked playdough
Sometimes, you might just want playdough quickly, and couldn’t be bothered cooking it, waiting for it to cool, yadda yadda, yadda… Or your kids might be keen to help you make it. Or, you might be at Playgroup and want to quickly make some for the kids, and not have time to cool it down before using it. My uncooked playdough recipe is handy for those times.
You will need:
3 cups of plain flour
1/3 cup of salt
1 and 1/4 cups of water
Plain flour for dusting
Colouring of your choice
Mix the first three ingredients together with your hands. Then turn it out onto a bench dusted with flour, and knead it until you are happy with its consistency. It should be just like bread dough.
Separate into the desired amount you’d like for each colour, then knead the food colouring through. Or you can use some of the suggestions mentioned in the cooked playdough recipe.
One thing that’s lovely about uncooked playdough, is that if children make it, they can give it to friends or family as a nice little homemade gift. We kneaded a little glitter through part of the batch for a little extra sparkle.
Fun ways to play with it.
The ideas here are endless, but I’m going to give you some good ones to get you all fired up.
- using bare hands only.
- rolled into ‘sausages’ and children encouraged to cut it into pieces with scissors. This is an excellent way to familiarise children with scissor use and strengthen their little muscles in preparation. It’s also much easier to cut playdough with scissors than paper when a child is starting to learn.
- provide an old garlic press and let the kids watch the playdough squish out like spaghetti. Again, this is great for fine motor strength.
- raid your useful box for straws, lids, cupcake cases etc for your children to add to their play.
- give your children rolling pins and cookie cutters to play with. We’ve not unpacked our rolling pin since the move yet, so I improvised and gave the kids this empty tissue cylinder.
Make sure to store your playdough in some cling wrap or a sealed plastic container. It’s great to encourage the kids to help pack up, too!
Mr 4′s caterpillar. He became deeply engrossed in this activity.
Now, to make life a little bit easier for anyone who likes to make their own playdough or fingerpaint, not only can you find the recipes at Hear Mum Roar, you can also download them in a handy printable format to keep in the kitchen. Click here to download.
I’d love to hear what your kids like to do with their playdough.
Edited to add: Here’s where Aussies can source Kool Aid (not sponsored links, just adding on request):
Now, I was planning to teach Missy 9 how to finger knit and crochet soon. I found out today that her relief teacher at school has already been teaching them to finger knit today! The whole class is obsessed and my daughter tells me she is addicted. Can you see how hard she is concentrating?
Missy 9 was keen to show my lovely readers how she finger knits:
We start with a loop on our finger, much like the sort of loop you’d make to start knitting on needles with.
Wind the wool over your finger, away from you.
Pull the original loop over the wool you have wound over your finger, and off. Kids love watching the chain grow, and grow, and grow! My daughter wants to make hers grow as long as her school basketball court!
If you’ve ever wanted to teach your child to crochet, finger knitting is an excellent starting point. It’s not quite so fiddly, and because our fingers are bigger than a crochet hook, it’s easier to see what’s meant to happen.
I gave Missy 9 a crochet hook and some wool from my studio, and encouraged her to try to make the same finger knitting chain on the crochet hook.
This was a bit more tricky! But not at all impossible. The only difference really, was that I had to teach her to wrap the wool on towards herself, as opposed to away from herself. It was also tricky for her to use the hook to pull the wool through the loop, but it’s fine when they’re learning to just pull it over with their finger, the same as they do when they finger knit.
I can’t think of a nicer way to spend a cold Friday afternoon than snuggling up with my daughter, dabbling in wool. Do your kids love wool too?
You can see in the photo above, a very well-loved Hama bead bulletin board. My daughter made this a few years ago as a present for her Grandpa. He’s kindly taken all his messages off to send me a photo so I can show you. I purchased the board ready-made, then we glued the Hama bead designs in place.
The first time my partner went into hospital for his paint poisoning, she made him this cute little fridge magnet to cheer him up.
Have you ever used/tried these wonderful, melty beads? If you haven’t, I’ll give you a brief run down. If you’d like a tutorial, let me know and I’ll do one in the near future (they’re still packed away for now). Basically, you buy these great little beads from craft/toy stores. You need a plastic template that has little stumps sticking out. The beads are placed on top of the stumps, so the stump is sitting inside the hole of the bead. Your childs’ fine motor skills and eye hand coordination are challenged as they carefully put on the Hama beads. Designs can be made out of these, with either pre made shaped templates, or children can place the beads in their own creative patterns.
Once they’re happy with their design, an adult needs to place a sheet of greaseproof paper over the top of the beads and iron it until the beads have melted enough to stick together. It’s then left to cool down and harden. Then you’re left with something like you see in the photos above! If you have some craft glue or a hot glue gun, then you can stick the designs to a cork board, a magnet, or whatever you wish. At my daughter’s old school, many kids used to hang them on their bags as a keyring.
Welcome to the June Teach/Learn Blogging Carnival, ‘Kids and Learning.’
The Teach/Learn Blogging Carnival hosted by Science@home is for anyone, because we are all teachers and learners all the time. This month our theme is “Art” which doesn’t just mean doing craft – it includes music, performance art and appreciation as well! Our bloggers have come up with many different thought-provoking takes on this theme. Please read through to the end to find links to the other participating blogs.
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Hey guys! I’ve done a little experiment with my kids and videotaped the results for you to watch. It’s all about structured art activities versus open-ended ones. Please bear with me, as, apart from my sponsored review videos I’ve done and little home videos, this is my first ‘put together’ video, just for you. In a few places, it’s wrongly cropped, in many places, my hand is unsteady, but I’m please to have finally built up the courage to give it a go. My kids and I also had a lot of fun doing this. I look forward to your reactions, so please share!
I hope you will go check out all the blog posts in this great carnival.
Visit Science@home to find out more about the Teach/Learn Blogging Carnival.
Please take the time to visit the other participants and check out their posts on “Art.”
CatWay at Adventures With Kids is getting the most out of a trip to the art gallery with ideas of how to prepare children and interest them while they are there.
Mamapoekie from Authentic Parenting argues for the importance of art and why we should be encouraging it as our children get older.
Miss Carly from Early Childhood Resources talks about how to create an environment that encourages young children to explore art.
Sharon at Hear Mum Roar has done a fantastic video post by getting her children to do an activity two different ways and letting you see the very different results.
Amanda at HomeAge has been admiring art with her daughter since she was a baby, taking her to several art exhibitions and reading books.
Kate from Picklebums talks about why art is important for little people and has a huge list of activities you can try.
The Planning Queen from Planning With Kids has tips for visiting the art gallery with kids, including links to different galleries and some ideas for activities afterwards.
Colin Wee at Super Parents is thinking about his son’s musicality as he learns to play the violin.
Deb from Science@home has her children investigating materials while making sculptures and bravely let the 2 year old use a hot glue gun.
Leechbabe from Stuff with Thing started out looking at patterns in nature, but the activity changed because she followed her children’s lead.
Monique at Your Cheeky Monkey has used an indoor activity, giving her children magazines to cut out and create collages.
Thanks for visiting, we hope you enjoy some of the posts in our carnival.
