Growing up

What a sobering title for this post, I have been finding it increasingly hard to post on this blog lately simply because we haven’t been doing any rubbish crafting. My children are growing up too fast, the youngest one is at school 5 mornings a week and when he gets home he would much rather watch a bit of telly or play UNO than  do anything crafty. The problem has been trying to find something he can engage with and be excited about.

The things he seems to like doing are

1. playing UNO

2. playing with his sister

3. playing LEGO

4. playing UNO

5. watching telly

6. playing on the computer/ iPad/ Wii

7. making a mess (today I discovered a whole toilet roll carefully rolled from kitchen to lounge, hooked over the airer on the radiator and rolled back again)

8. playing UNO

Not much scope for crafting there. We did make some LEGO style storage tubs. We took a margarine tub and glued bottle tops onto it, then covered it in shiny, metallic chocolate wrappers (it was a golden one for treasure). We got about halfway through and he decided he’d had enough.  So there we are, any rubbish crafting I do now will have to be done by me, on my own- nowhere near as much fun. Maybe it’s not just the children that are growing up.

If I have painted a picture of my son as slightly lacking in imagination and being slightly UNO obsessed it was not intentional. He is an amazing person (although I am biased), they are learning about electricity at school this week, and he was pondering how he could take the pinball machine into school to show them (as it runs on electricity). He decided ‘If we had a bag bigger than the pinball machine and a friendly giant we could take the pinball maching into school.’  Yes, I suppose we could.

The two of my children together seem to amuse themselves with not much input from me, here are some photos of the bench they made out of branches they found  when we went on a picnic. Together they dragged or carried all the branches to where we were sitting and then worked to put them all together.  I wonder if this interest for outdoor art could be used to make some garden art out of the many, many, many sticks we still seem to bring home from everywhere we go….

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Getting back on trac (tor)

Sorry for the bad pun in the title. I think however, it is appropriate as the week’s rubbish craft is brilliant, back to the old standard of  stuck together rubbish!  The whole thing was decided upon, designed and done by my four year old (well most of it).

After watching Mister Maker he decided he wanted to make a tractor. We rummaged around in the junk box(es) until he found the bits he needed. Using 2 cardboard tubs, 6 lids and part of a cereal box he made this.

 

First the tubs were painted green and left to dry.

 The next day the wheels were stuck on with double sided tape. I then mixed some pva glue with yellow paint for him to paint the wheels. This bit didn’t work very well!

After it was dry we attached the trailer to the tractor and added stickers for decoration.

Brilliant eh?

I have also been working on this, would like to know if you can work out what it is meant to be. Even my usually perceptive children took several guesses on this one. Good Luck!

 

Uninspired!

Usually I can’t wait to update this blog weekly, but I have had  a few weeks of uninspiring ideas so today’s blogging has taken a backseat to everything else.

Luckily after a lovely few days with my family I have come back with some brilliant things to use and some more exciting ideas. Hopefully the joy will be back in this blog next week. Till then here’s a picture to cheer you all up.

Yep it is impossible to get all four of them looking at the camera at the same time.

Buses and campervans

Happy New Year to my many (or two) readers. Welcome back to a new term of rubbish crafting- or should that be crafty rubbish?

Today’s activity used 3 things; plastic lids, cut out pictures from magazines/catalogues and my old wedding invitations (yes from 8 years ago, and they did move house with us to this place). I cut out one side of the card into a bus shape, with 3 little windows, I then added 3 little faces from a catalogue to the other half of card, glued the two halves together and then stuck the plastic lid wheels on with double sided tape. As I used the card inside out I could decorate the outside with stripes. 

The stripes didn’t really make it look very bus-ey, my daughter has insisted it is a camper van- wonder where she got that idea from?

This is my son’s bus. He chose the wheels first, making sure he had the biggest in the box. You might not be able to see but he has added 2 to the other side as well so that it stands up.

These were surprisingly popular, all 16 that I had cut out were used, and all the faces- although that might be because one child stuck about 20 on their bus (there’s always one..)

So that’s it for now, have to cut out another one tomorrow for my daughter to make. At five to teatime she wanted to know when she could make her own campervan… You can see life has returned to normal then after Christmas.

Have a good week.