Air drying clay | Rubbish Craft for Toddlers

It was my gran-in-law’s 92nd birthday last week, which created a bit of a dilemma- what on earth does a 92 year old want for her birthday? I imagine at that age you don’t want generic stuff anymore. However, her birthday falls in half-term so I decided that we would spend some time making her something.

I decided we would go for simple and easy.

The children collected some leaves from the garden, whilst I found the air-drying clay, flexible cutting boards, blunt knives and rolling pins.

We then rolled out some clay, and laid the leaves on the top, flattened them down into the clay and then lifted the leaves off. The leaves left imprints in the clay.

Using the blunt knives the children cut out around the leaves, I made a hole in the top of the slab of clay and we left them to dry.

By the time the leaves were dry enough to paint, 3 days later the children had lost interest so I painted them.

Quite pleased with these. Not too sure what she’ll do with them though, they are quite fragile, I didn’t really think it through.

I also made her a crocheted cushion as she had given me her old crochet hooks earlier in the year. I think she liked it, she kept it in her lap for most of the afternoon (might just have been too far to put it on the floor).

So thats what we gave a 92 year old on her birthday, and some biscuits. What are we going to give her next year?

Following on from the last post here is my son’s tortoise made at toddlers last week. The drinks and biscuits came out just after he had started sticking the tissue paper on so it only has half a shell.

It seems about the right time to use proper blog speak and post a WIP. So guess what these are intended for…..

Would be nice to get your answers in the comments bit but I can’t find out how to turn that bit on, (and only a possible maximum of two people read this anyway).

And finally my must watch telly of the moment is ‘Mister Maker’ on Cbeebies as he seems to have used all my ideas and made them ten times better (in that they work and look like something you might want to have).

My two children were inspired to try and make hedgehogs out of spaghetti and air-drying clay. My daughter (age 5) made some lovely, flat bottomed, very spiky hedgehogs with fairly uniform prickles. My son (aged 3) focussed on making long prickled, round hedgehogs that could stand up on their spaghetti legs. And yes I do now have a box of small bits of clay with spaghetti stuck in them- some are even now painted.