The wisdom passed on from  grandparents to their grandchildren can never be underestimated. This week our craft activity takes us on a little painting excursion with a grandfather and his granddaughter. Grandparents often seem to have so much more patience with our children than we do. Perhaps  age and wisdom or maybe it is reflection on what they didn’t do with their own children or maybe it is the pure luxury of time. Whatever the reason, the gentle and encouraging way that this grandfather teaches his grandaughter the basics of water colour painting is truly lovely to watch! Tobie carefully watches as her grandpa puts brush to paper and the way she carefully tries to follow his instructions is adorable. Of course like any four year old she has her own method which reflects her self expression ( as well as her love of black paint). But this never phases grandpa, he doesn’t have the need to control or change her picture but rather constantly praises her.

 Tobie and her grandpa Sandy worked with watercolour paints, pencils and watercolour paper. As they were taking their painting oudoors, it was important that they didn’t have too much to carry. Sandy had a p0rtable easle, but Tobie just had her paper attached to a board so that she could work with it on her lap. She carried her own little fold out chair and just had a couple of brushes and some watercolour paints in her backpack. While it is great to just give a child a whole lot different materials and just let them “go for it”, it is also really nice to sometimes use adult quality materials when you have the opportunity to sit and work with them. They love it, feel special and a framed work of art makes the child so proud!

What you will need for this activity:

• Watercolour paints
• Watercolour paper
• range of watercolour brushes
• board
• tape
• water
• fold out chair
• nature!

On this weeks episode, Maddie, Tobie and Zoe made some beautiful candles using waffle wax and coloured wax sheets. There are many ways to make and decorate candles. Candle dipping is a great activity for older children as it does involve melting beeswax down to liquid and then continuously dipping in your wick until the candle has formed. These candles have a beautiful handmade look about them and also their fragrance is very calming. It is a great activity to do indoors around an open fire on a cold winter’s day.

For younger children however, rolling the waffle wax and then decorating it is simple and safe!

What you need:

• Sheets of waffle wax cut into rectangles ( approximately 10cm x 20cm). These are available at most craft stores.
• A box of coloured wax sheets ( we purchased these at the Steiner store in Kew)
• A pair of scizzors
• Candlewick. ( It does work better than ordinary string)
• Warm little hands!

How to:

• Place the candlewick along the short end of your rectangle and firmly roll the wax around it.
• Once the waffle sheet is rolled up, give it a good squeeze as the warmth of your hands will secure the wax
• Cut up any shapes you like out of the coloured wax sheets and firmly press into your candle.

In this weeks craft activity we celebrated autumn with the creation of these amazing autumn crowns. This is also a great activity for an outdoor children’s party. It certainly doesn’t have to be an autumn only activity, imagine how beautiful a crown of spring flowers would be!

What you need:

• Cereal boxes cut into strips
• Wide double sided tape
• Scizzors
• Heavy duty stapler
• All sorts of leaves, pods, berries and other autumn treasures!

How to:

• Measure cardboard strip around your head leaving a couple of centimetres for the join.
• Stick a strip of double sided tape along the length of the carboard srtip but do not remove backing.
• Turn cardboard strip over and start stapling leaves on. It is really effective if you start with the largest leaves in the centre and then work outwards with smaller ones.
• When you have covered the entire side of the cardboard, turn it over and carefully remove the backing off the tape.
• Now you can stick more leaves onto the tape so that you end up completely covering the cardboard.
• You can keep decorating with more leaves, berries or seed pods.
• Finally, join together with a few staples.

 These crowns also make great head pieces for outdoor games and imaginary adventures!

This week Nana Margaret ( Margaret McSweeney), made a delicious apple pie with her grand daughter Romaine.

As this episode was all about “ Harvest”, we decided to cook something using fruit that is harvested in autumn, so apple pie it was!

Margaret made pastry making look so easy and the encouraging and lovely way she involved Romaine was an inspiration to those of us who cringe when our kids say “ Can I help?”.

What you need:

• 3 cups of flour
• 200 grams of butter
• 10 granny smith apples
• About a half a cup of water
• One egg
• Half a teaspoon of salt
• Half a teaspoon of cinnamon
• Half a teaspoon of nutmeg
• One lemon
• 3 tablespoons of raw sugar
• 1 teaspoon of caster sugar

HOW TO:

Step 1

Peel and chop up the apples very fine as they are going into the pastry raw and if they are too thick they will stay cruchy

Step 2

Mix the apples with the juice of 1 lemon, the spices and the 3 tablespoons of sugar.

Step 3

Making the pastry

Sift three cups of flour

Add half a teaspoon of salt

Rub in 200 grams of grated butter

Make a little well in the middle and pour in half a cup of water

Gently mix the flour and water until they come together into a dough

Knead mixture on floured baking paper

Divide in half

Roll out first half

Grease pie dish

Flip pastry over into dish, gently pressing into the sides, trim.

Step 4

Pour apple mixture into pie dish.

Step 5

Baste edges with whisked egg

Step 6

Roll out other half of pastry and flip that onto top

Step 7

Baste all over with egg

Step 8

Bake in the oven at 180 degrees celsius for 40 minutes

Serve warm with cream or ice cream and a cup of tea!

Children love to create cosy little homes for their dolls and teddies. I’ve even found a couple of dead beetles tucked up in bed inside our dolls house!

This week the girls made a little house for some pixie friends! It was amazing to watch their imaginations run wild as they created this gorgeous little shelter with all it’s tiny bits and pieces.

They collected some things from nature such as autumn leaves,

gum nuts, twigs and moss. Then they added some objects from around the house such as a little crocheted doilie ( perfect for a pixie rug), some little felt balls they had made from fleece, and some other woolie things! In fact this would be a perfect exercise in finger knitting. After making a length of knitting, just coil it up and sew together for the perfect little rug.

The girls chatted away about what they were making. Soon light shades, ladders, vases with flowers, clay tables and chairs and autumn leaf bed spreads, all began to appear. We had previously glued a little four paned twig window onto the side of the box and cut out the sections with a stanley knife ( parental supervision definately required!)

The pixie shelter was starting to look so quaint and cosy. The girls could have continued for hours, adding this and that! The great thing about this activity is that they are creating something which then provides them with hours of imaginary play.

Finally it was time to add the little pixies. These were purchased from the Steiner Store in Kew. Making a little pixie or elf shelter in the garden is another lovely idea as the kids are out amongst nature which provides them with an endless supply of materials for this activity!

This week we took the kids out to the bushland of Warrandyte just outside of Melbourne, where they collected all sorts of materials to make little boats. We really love the idea of the kids constructing their own little toys because they are forced to use their imagination completely. There are no instructions or manuals, bits to lose or break. Nature is all around them, offering them so many wonderful materials and treasures with which to build their little vessels!

There were of course the odd frustration as bits wouldn’t stay on or were toppling over, trying to work out how to join this bit to that, but once the kids really started to think about what boats look like, it was amazing to see what they came up with. Some made totally majestic ships with feathers and reeds, bark and leaves. Then there were the sweet, simple little pod boats with a single sail stuck down with a bit of plasticine. It was amusing to see the different personalities reflected in each construction!

What you will need:

Different materials collected from nature such as seedpods, bark, reeds, feathers, leaves, flowers, twigs.

Other helpful materials: corks, glue, plasticine, string, icy pole sticks.

How to:

There were no rules.  This activity was really about using your imagination and experimenting with construction. The corks are probably a fairly good starting point if you really want to make sure your boat will float, but working out where to attach and how to attach the corks can be another challenge.

Just following a simple leaf boat down a stream can be fun for the kids.

Safety

Of course we must mention the importance of safety and adult supervision when children are playing near water. The boats however, would float on a very shallow little river of water, one that the kids could construct themselves in a sandpit!

In this weeks craft we made wind flags using coloured fabric and wooden rods. Children can often be quite frightened of wind as it howls under their window panes at night, but give them a wind flag and ask them to run down a hill, and their fear immediately turns to exhilaration!

What you will need:

•Coloured cotton, preferably with an open weave so you can get a fairly thick blunt (safe), needle through it.

•Coloured cotton thread

•Scissors

•Short fat tacks

•Hammer

•PVA glue

•Lengths of wooden dowel blunt on each end.

How to:∙

Simply cut long triangles out of the cotton fabric

∙Next cut out some shapes in contrasting colours

∙Sew them onto your triangles

∙Then roll the wide end of your fabric onto the stick and attach with glue or your short tacks

Memories of lying on a grass oval making “daisy chains” was the inspiration for this weeks craft activity.

Making flower chains is very simple and probably is better suited to outdoors. If you can find a grassy patch where there are lots of dandelions growing, throw down a picnic rug or just lie in the grass and start linking those flowers together.

How to:

So long as your flowers have a little stem, you don’t need anything else! Just make a little slit in the stem and thread the next flower through that slit. Once you have passed the second flower through, make a slit in the second stem and pass the next flower through that and so on and so on.

When you have decided your chain is long enough, pass the last flower back through the slit in the first one. You can then knot that last stem to keep it secure or tie it with a little string.

These are the perfect accessories for an outdoor fairy party (as well as providing an activity!)

This week we made a slight variation to this segment and did some cooking using the fresh produce we had grown in our veggie patch!

Our veggie patch really thrived despite the lack of water. We put this down to good fertilizer (sheep manure) and a good layer of pea straw on top!

As the beans and tomatoes were still not quite ready, we decided on something which used the beautiful basil and the lettuce from the garden. We decided to make some pesto to have with pasta and a nice fresh salad.

Ingredients:

•Generous cup of basil leaves

•Half a cup of olive oil

•Cup of parmesan cheese

•Two cloves of garlic

•Half a cup of pine nuts

How to:

Grind pine nuts in a mortar and pestle until they are a paste.

Slowly drizzle in the oil

Add garlic

Add your torn up basil leaves

Continue to grind these ingredients in the mortar and pestle until smooth. (You can use a food processor but the mortar and pestle works well with the kids!)

Finally stir through the cheese.

Serve through spaghetti. Yum!

Making shell a shell picture

We loved the idea of making a little picture in the sand out of shells and sticks, stones and seaweed, taking a photo then framing that photo, thereby creating a permanent memory without removing anything from the beach.

But of course children love collecting treasures to take home so as long as you keep the amount of shells to a minimum and don’t collect them from a National Park, our little shell and stone pictures also make a lovely memento of our visit to the beach.

You will need:

•Collection of pebbles and shells, even small twigs.

•A canvas and some acrylic paint

•Tile adhesive (for absolute permanency but non-toxic PVA would also work)

How to:

•Paint your canvas (we chose greens and blues to represent the ocean). Allow to dry thoroughly.

•Start sticking your little pebbles and shells anyway you like!

•The tile adhesive needs about 24 hours to dry.