Toddler Group Tuesday

Coming up on the 23rd June, we have our Village Open Gardens and Scarecrow Trail. This is an event that takes place biennially, you can see details from the last one here and here. It also coincides with our Village Church Flower Festival in which all of the village groups and organisations are invited to display a flower arrangement. Toddler Group is always asked, and the previous three years, I have been the one to put the flower arrangement together. This year though, I have asked one of the local mums if she would like to do it and she has said that she will. She is part of the local gardening club too, so should have some good ideas.

I have tried to include a craft project for the children each year that can be displayed with the flowers. Kathryn has also offered to arrange not one but two craft sessions with the results to be displayed in church.

This week Kathryn had us all making pretty Paper Flowers.

For this craft you will need:
 - A Paper Plate
- Scissors
- PVA Glue
- Glitter and sparkly bits
- a Pencil
- Coloured Paper

Sorry, I don't have any photographs of the process (it was rather manic at the group this morning!), hopefully the instructions will be clear enough.



Pre-prepared supplies (you can just see the card blanks and cut out ties in the background for our Fathers' Day craft too).

First, draw a flower shape on your paper plate and cut out.

Cut some leaf shapes from green paper and stitck to the back of the paper plate flower so that they can be seen sticking out from the right side.

Fold an A4 sheet of coloured paper into quarters. Draw around your childs hand (or if they're old enough, they can do this themselves.) and cut out through all 4 layers. You now have 4 coloured hand shapes.



Kathryn helping cut out some paper hands.

Glue the hand shapes to the centre of your flower.

Make a tube from a piece of coloured paper. Glue this to the centre of your flower on top of the hand shapes.

Glue as many sprinkles and shiny bits to your flower as you like.

Look how lovely they look together and this is only a few. Here are some on their own to show a bit more detail and how very different they all are:



This masterpiece is the Smaller Persons. He was most interested in drawing around his fingers (I think the pencil tickled!) and of course, sticky messy glue and lots of sprinkly glitter is always a winner!

Next week, Kathryn has arranged for everyone to make Flower Fairies.

As it is Fathers' Day coming up this Sunday, I did put some quick cards out for the children to make. It wouldn't be right not to include the Dads in our crafty creations!

There are various versions of this card all over the internet (and I think possibly in one of the Small Persons craft books).

You will need:
- Card
- Scissors
- PVA Glue
- Patterned Paper (scrapbooking or wrapping paper is ideal)

Fold and A4 sheet of card in half to form the base of your card.

Draw a tie shape on the wrong side of your selected patterned paper, cut out and stick to the centre of your card.

Cut a 1-1.5" strip of coloured card from the short edge of an A4 sheet.

Fold this strip 1/3 of the way across at an angle so as the top corner point touches the bottom edge of the strip. Repeat for the other side. This is your collar.

Glue this to the top of your card as shown so that it overlaps your paper tie.

Cut 2 small rectangles of card. Glue them to the back of your card at angles to form 'sleeves'.

Cut a 1cm wide strip of card from the short edge of an A4 sheet. Write your special message on it and glue in place across your finished card.

These cards also have glitter all over them. This wasn't part of the inital plan, the glitter shakers migrated their way over from the flower table, and why not? Add a bit of sparkle to Dad's day!