ART & CRAFT

Creative and simple ideas to keep your kids entertained. This is a helpful resource for all our mums at home as well as our playgroups across London. REWARD! If you send us your creative tips we will reward you. Email monica@londonmums.org.uk

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'Making Autumn Birds' By London Mum and artist Maggy Woodley, founder of Red Ted Art (September 2010)

Hi, I am Maggy and I am visiting from www.redtedart.com where I regularly craft with my toddler, Red Ted. Although Red Ted is only 2.5 yrs, the crafts we do are suitable for ages up to around 12 yrs - you simply help the children "more or less" according to abilities!

Autumn is the absolute best time for collecting leaves, so we set out for an autumnal walk to find some nice examples.

Leaves can become brittle with time. So tried leave rubbing - to discover that Red Ted (2.5yrs) is still too small. Do the leaf rubbing with older children. With Red Ted, I changed it to leaf printing and painting! Which worked brilliantly for his age group.

He loved it! And had great joy doing it all by himself. Choosing colours. Painting and printing. I also found that your preserve the leaf a little if you paint it with acrylic paints. But in a way that seems a shame - you want to look at the lovely colours, no?

Whilst at it, he painted some loo rolls too.

And I decided to make some autumnal birds. One out of Red Ted's leave prints and one out of my leaf rubbings. I selected Red Ted's prints that worked together well (greens, blacks and greys) and picked an orange set of mine to represent autumn. I used all pieces of string from gift bags & pebbles/ forked sticks for feet and marionette handles. (I think the pictures speak for themselves):

For more kid's craft ideas or tutorials for adults, come visit me, Maggy at www.redtedart.com

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Making an aeroplane and a UFO with recycled material By London Mum and mumpreneur Maggy Woodley, founder of Red Ted Art (May 2010)

Our first stART project inspired by Playing By the Book and A Mommy's Adventures - who have made some great booky projects! Do take a look, they are fab. We decided to "honour" Oliver Jeffers with our first arty porject and we picked The Way Back Home. It is a lovely quirky book featuring the impossible made possible! Planes in cupboards, martians and climbing to the moon. Lovely drawings. Lovely book.

Red Ted likes to leaf through his books by himself, but we also read them together. Sometimes I just "tell him" the story as we go along (as I speak German to him), so we talk about the pictures more that way. He we are reading.

Story Time

Some craft materials: Loo Roll, Cardboard (recycled box), scissors, Masking Tape, paint & prushes, Newspaper.

Materials

I made the models, as Red Ted is still a little small, but let him paint. For the plane I used some loo roll, cardboard and some newspaper at the front scrunched up. I secured it with masking tape, as you can paint over it. The wings are just slotted into holes I cut. I got the idea from a friend's father who made a fabulous plane out of a kitchen towel roll for his son! For the UFO (as we call it in German), I used an empty baby food pot (erm, I don't buy baby food, this was left over from a visitor) and two circles of cardboard. I slot the pot through a hole in one circle and stick the other circle underneath. I did pad it out with some scrunched up newspaper, to give it some body. I covered it in masking tape, as Red Ted is sure to cover it in paint. You can remove it afterwards!

Red Ted gets stuck: Red Ted gets to paint! We almost had a tantrum as Red Ted couldn't wait to start on the UFO, but I hadn't made it yet. Maybe Green is his favourite colour!!! I think just as much paint went all over the newspaper and Red Ted's hands as it did on the plane and UFO. But surely, that is half the fun?!? Why not visit Maggy for more craft ideas at http://redtedart.wordpress.com

THE AUTHOR: Maggy Woodley, artist and founder of Red Ted Art - Bringing Art & Colour to Children's Hearts www.redtedart.com