- Nature explorer bag
- Creativity centre for toddlers
- Kids science experiment box
- Mud Pie kitchen
- Toddlers sewing basket
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kids crafts
For more kids craft, creative ideas and activities go to the Action Pack website
I am very excited to almost be able to introduce to you the Celebration issue of Action Pack Magazine for kids. This issue is a whopper – and is coming together at last. I had hoped to release it today – alas there are a few final touches that need to happen before I can do that – but by Friday – I promise it will be here!
In the meantime here is a little taster of what you can expect…
- Recipes: cookies and holiday treats from around the world (9 recipes)
- Decorations: – ornaments, wreaths, banners and a nativity scene (8 projects)
- Games and gifts: – Wintry scenes to cut out and display, cards and gift tags, dress ups and games to make and play with (6 projects including printables)
Am very excited to be introducing lots of contributors in this issue too:
- Verity Heysen Kizek: Verity is a illustrator just moved from Istanbul to Australia. In Istanbul, she loved going for walks around her local neighbourhood with her four year old son Yashar, and catching the ferry across the Bosphorus.
- Lorraine Teigland: Lorraine loves cardboard and sewing. She used to be a Science teacher but now stays home with her three daughters Emily (age 7), Jenna (age 5) and Kate (age 3). All three girls love art and craft, princess, dolls, dressing-up, dancing, baking and inventing. Together, they have made many cardboard things, including dollhouses, cars, scooters, traffic lights, ships, trees, a train and a grocery store. Lorraine is also slowly teaching them to sew toys, clothes and bags for themselves and their dolls.
- Kathreen Ricketson (thats me): Kathreen is the founder of Action Pack, she lives in Canberra Australia with her husband Rob and their two children: Orlando (9-yrs old) and Otilija (11-yrs old). They have some chooks and recently added a pair of ducklings to their family (their names are Five-spice and Soy-sauce).
- Joanie Gorman: Joanie lives in Hampshire, England with her children, Tristan (13) and Grace (almost 10) and their dog Pippi (18 months). Joanie is a writer and art teacher and makes a mean chocolate brownie. You can often find her with her kids in the woods with their funny little border terrier.
- Carina Envoldsen-Harris: Carina lives in England but is originally from Denmark. She has lots of crafty adventures in embroidery, crochet and sewing. When Carina isn’t crafting or drawing you can probably find her watching Star Wars!
- Clare Collins: Clare is from Perth, Western Australia, and lives on a sail boat in Mexico with her husband, Ken, and their four children, Matthew, Drew, Isabelle and Nico. They collect dolls made by the indigenous people of the countries they visit and they love learning about different crafts and celebrations.
- Francesca Mueller: Francesca lives with her husband and three children in an ancient village in northern Italy, perched on a limestone cliff by the Mediterranean. They love to grow vegetables, cook delicious food, go on nature walks and whittle wood as well as many other creative things.
- Pascale Mestdagh: Pascale has two daughters, 8 and 11 years old. They all live in Paris, France, where they like to create with fabric, yarn, wool, paper, paint and glue. They give each other unlimited inspiration.!
- Anna Hytonen: is mother to Agnes and Leo. They take turns to celebrate Christmas in both Finland and Sweden, as they have family in both countries.
In the meantime I have packaged together all seven issues so far this year – and you can get them all for a discounted price …
Available here and now – or go to the shop to purchase it from there.
This is an e-magazine – you will receive a download link to a high quality printable pdf
Action Pack 2011 Bundle: Issues 1-7: Set of 7 Action Pack Magazines. Includes Issues 1-7. Save $ by buying the whole set only $30. Great gift for the active, creative children in your life!
- :: Issue 1: Paper + Beeswax (Origami projects, beeswax & honey projects)
- :: Issue 2: Seeds + Beads (Beaded dragonfly, cooking and growing seeds)
- :: Issue 3: Sew + Tea (learn about tea, sew a tea cosy & a play tea set)
- :: Issue 4: Great Outdoors (bumper issue 80 pages of outdoor crafts, adventures and cooking)
- :: Issue 5: Chalk + Cheese (Learn how to make your own chalk, cheese and other crafty projects using these materials)
- :: Issue 6: Zap + Zest (Bumper issue around the themes of electricity and citrus)
- :: Issue 7: Sticks + Stones (Projects using lots of natural materials).
What do you think of the cover of the new Celebration issue? … so hard to get kids to take a not too silly photo! Just bribe them with the pavlova they just finished making.
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LiEr is a wife to Dave and mom to three little girls Emily (7), Jenna (almost 5) and Kate (3). She used to be a high-school physics teacher and sometime school counselor and now gratefully stays home and sleeps in. She likes making things and divides her crafting time between sewing (too much) and cardboard (nowhere near enough). She blogs at ikatbag where she writes tutorials because she hasn’t quite managed to beat the teacher part of her into retirement. She also has a small nutella problem.
Cardboard Easel With Chalkboard On One Side And Dry-Erase Board On The Other Made Out Of A Pizza Box And That Folds Shut And Has A Bonus Homemade Eraser
Hello everyone! My oldest daughter Emily is having a birthday party in September and one of the crafts are these cardboard easels made from pizza boxes. Long ago, I made largish tabletop easels, inspired by Maya’s easels. My girls loved them – we taped paper to them and they went wild with their paint brushes. For the party, I thought mini-easels would be the perfect size for the guests to make and decorate.
This being a school-themed party, we’re making them two-in-one: chalkboard on one side, and dry-erase board on the other. We’re also throwing in a homemade eraser and some dry-erase markers and chalk that store inside the easel when it’s closed.
Because I couldn’t find 14 small pizza boxes, I had to cut and assemble my own boxes. Obviously, you don’t have to make yours from scratch – it should be easy enough to save one pizza box from a meal!
You will need:
- One small pizza box (ours was a 10″)
- Extra piece of corrugated cardboard the same size as the top of the pizza box
- One milk (or juice) jug cap
- One small piece of foam (we used high-density)
- Chalkboard contact paper
- Dry-erase contact paper
- The usual suspects: craft knife, scissors, hot glue gun
Note: You can buy chalkboard contact paper and dry-erase contact paper online (try amazon) and at some craft stores. An alternative is to use chalkboard paint and regular clear contact paper over white card stock.
Step 1: Glue down the center flaps of the pizza box so the four shallow walls of the board are upright.
Step 2: Cut a piece of corrugated cardboard the same size as the top of the pizza box. Hot-glue this to the front flap (the one that tucks into the front of the box). This is the finished bare easel, with its flap tucked into the base.
Step 3: Cut a piece of dry-erase contact paper to size, peel and stick it onto one side of the open easel. Repeat for the chalkboard contact paper, sticking that to the opposite side of the open easel. The easel is completed!
Step 4: Cut a piece of foam so that it is bigger than the milk jug cap. This piece will fit nicely inside the cap, but it will be too tall. You can trim yours to the right height, and to a more aesthetically pleasing shape if you like.
Step 5: Hot glue the foam piece to the inside of the cap, squeezing it in so that it expands and fits snugly inside the cap. This works really well with the dry-erase side of the easel but we found that we had to dampen it a little to get the chalkboard absolutely clean. Add chalk, dry-erase markers and play school! Or write silly messages to no one in particular.
When you’re done playing, store everything inside the easel, fold and shut the lid, and put it away for another day.
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For more kids craft, creative ideas and activities go to the Action Pack website
Kate lives on ten acres of weeds called The Pickle Farm with her husband, four kids, two guinea pigs and numerous chooks. Before having her children Kate was a preschool teacher with a passion for art and natural play areas. These days she blogs at picklebums.com about parenting, activities for kids, gardening, family food and whatever else that pops into her head.
Painted Tin Can Planters – A child friendly project.
My big kids love to create. As a preschool teacher and a parent I know that it is important for my kids to have lots of uninterrupted time to explore and simply make art. To make, paint, build and draw with no rules and no pre-determined outcome or product.
Occasionally our projects do have a set goal in mind though, especially when we are creating gifts, which we love to do. When I think of these kinds of craft projects I still try to make sure the project is ‘open-ended’ enough to allow the children to create without too many boundaries. The project needs to be simple enough for our four year old to take part in (and soon the baby will want to join in too) and it needs to allow for individual creativity, I am not looking for carbon copies or a product that looks exactly like the one in the book or on the web page.
It was with these ideas in mind that we began our recent project to make a thank you gift for a friend – painted tin can planters.
Over a number of days we collected tin cans in various sizes.
- It was the four-year-old’s job to remove the labels from the cans, wash and dry them so they would be ready to paint.
- Our seven year old twins used a large nail and hammer to punch holes in the bottom of the cans for drainage.
When we had a good selection of cans ready to go we collected our art materials.
- We used small sample pots of water based interior paint, a variety of brushes and sponge brushes, and some water to wash our brushes.
- You’ll also need to cover your work surface, wear an apron or smock, and grab a few old rags for cleaning up along the way, this project got pretty messy!
The kids had a fabulous time painting the tins, and so did I!
The project was easy enough for my four year old to do with very little help and open enough for everyone to really let their creative juices run wild. We each chose a slightly different approach, and decorated our tins in different ways, with fabulous, individual results.
After leaving the tins to dry for a day we carefully replanted some of our spring flowering daffodils into a can or two ready to be given as a gift.
Printable gift cards
Instead of a gift card I created some printable ‘Thank You Flowers’. You can download the printable flowers here [PDF download]. Print them out, cut out the flowers and stick them to an icy-pole stick of wooden skewer, pop them in a pot plant, or bunch of flowers for an extra special thank you. They’d also make nice little gift tags with a hole punched in the corner.
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For more kids craft, creative ideas and activities go to the Action Pack website
Jo is a British mom living in Japan, she blogs at A Bit Of This and A Bit Of That about Montessori, crafting, sewing, her son, life in Japan and everything in between. She designs sewing patterns and sells them and cute Japanese fabrics in her Etsy shop. During September Jo is hosting a New Skills Festival with a whole host of bloggers from around the world, sharing their expertise, pop along and see what you can learn.
Hi, I am very happy to share a quick and easy tutorial with you today. Any parent of an active child will no doubt have a pack of band aids in their bag (along with other essentials like toy cars, stray Lego pieces, spare underpants, box of tissues…). I know there are cool band aids out there with character goods which can produce more tears if just the right character isn’t available for the latest cut or scrape but I thought, why not personalise the band aids?
What you need:
- band aids (water proof)
- rubber stamps
- ink pad
I recommend the waterproof band aids because the ink won’t soak through to the other side, which is the bit you need to keep clean.
- Carefully remove the band aid from the cover, you want to keep the band aid as clean as possible so make sure you do this on a clean work surface.
- Use your stamps to write out messages, you can have fun personalising them for your child, you don’t have to stamp out words, you could use picture stamps too.
- When the ink has dried, slide the band aid back into it’s cover and patiently wait until the next time you need one….or two….
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For more kids craft, creative ideas and activities go to the Action Pack website
