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Tuesday 3 November 2009

Crafting with the kids for Bonfire night

I absolutely love this time of year! The nights are darker so things feel cosier, and the freshness in the air always reminds me of shopping in town ready for Christmas. There's craft fairs and christmas fairs popping up all over the place and I love nothing better than closing the blinds on a dark night and crafting away on the sofa (and all over the table and floor too. I like to spread myself around a bit!).


I have so many things to do at the moment it's unlikely I'll be able to add anything new and fun to my crafting list, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun with the small person. Today at toddler group we made rockets from toilet roll middles (which I've been saving for a few months now! Mr Bogert will be pleased to see they have left the kitchen).

This is the small person's wonderful creation



To make this we used
  • red paint (but you can use any colour you like)
  • glitter
  • pva glue
  • cirlce of paper (we used an already gummed piece because it was easier for making the number we needed for the group, but plain will work just as well)
  • ribbons/crepe paper in red, yellow, orange, silver, gold. Fiery colours.
  • toilet roll middle
  1. First get your small person to paint the toilet roll middler all over. This is the fun bit, because it's the messiest!
  2. Once it's wet all over, sprinkle glitter where you want so that it sticks to the paint.
  3. Take your paper circle and cut from the edge to the centre and pull the edges over each other to form a cone shape. Fix with glue or tape. (If you have an older child they can do this themselves, but as we have plenty of littlies at toddler group, we did this for them.)
  4. Add glue to the top edge of your toilet roll middle and fix the cone to this.
  5. Lastly, use either glue or tape to stick strands of the paper/ribbon to the inside of the bottom edge of your toilet roll middle. These are the flames as your rocket takes off!

We're going to hang ours outside on bonfire night from a string :)

I've been thinking of other things I can do craft wise with her and this is what I've come up with:

  • Wax resist pictures. use brightly coloured crayons to drawn bursts and scribbles of colour all over a sheet of paper or card, then use black paint all over and see the colours reappear through the paint like fireworks on a dark night.


  • Firework print pictures. Use ordinairy objects like cotton reels, hand cut potato stamps, cookie cutters etc to stamp pretty colourful "fireworks" on dark paper or card then sprinkle with glitter before the paint dries.


  • Another variation of the above. Use bright coloured paints that stand out well against dark paper or card and use a paint brush to apply a large blob of colour to the page, then use a straw to blow through and spread the paint out in a startburst. Again add the glitter, and hey presto, instant fireworks!

  • Very small children could use their hands as the firework print. Paint the hands up with a bright coloured paint and hand stamp all over the page, then again use glitter to add some sparkle.

  • How about a bonfire collage? Gather some small sticks from the garden (or in our case we've used the old burnt long matches left over from lighting the pumpkins), glue them to the bottom of a page. Tear strips of fiery coloured tissue paper and glue above and between the sticks to act as flames, then again, you guessed it, add loads of glitter! (The glue's still wet on this one!)


  • How about making a Guy? Guy Fawkes needn't be scary (but this could make the idea a bit cooler for older kids) he could just be a cute stuffed dummy :) Use things you would normally throw away. A pair of tights with a ladder or hole will work fine as a body, head, arms, legs etc. and can be stuffed with old newspapers. Once stuffed his face could be collaged from cuttings from magazines, or shapes from paper/card/felt etc or anything else that you might have lying around yours or the small persons craft stash. You can use bits of ribbon or wool for hair, and he can be dressed in old clothes that have seen their last day, or scraps of rag/fabric/dusters etc. This can be alot of fun! I think I'm going to start finding bits for ours right now!

I'd love to hear from you if you have any other good ideas for Guy Fawkes craft, or even if you've tried any of the ones I've suggested here.

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