crafts, FREE printables, kids

Teaching Your Kids Patience

Tired of hearing “Are we there yet?” on every trip? Wish your kids could wait their turn at the slide, or not pounce on your fresh batch of cookies as soon as they leave the oven? You need to teach them patience, which is not as difficult as you might think…

1. Start Small

Don’t expect your little one to magically transform into a patience Jedi overnight. Begin by helping them endure tiny waits. For example, if your child demands apple juice this very second, calmly say, “You’ll have it in two minutes.” Then set a timer—something visible and fun, so the waiting feels like a game rather than punishment. Two minutes might not sound like much to you, but it’s an eternity in kid-years. Eventually, you can stretch it out to three minutes, then five, building their tolerance for that terrifying abyss known as “not right now.”

2. Model, Don’t Just Lecture

You can shout “BE PATIENT!” until your vocal cords give out, but if you fly into a rage because the internet takes seven extra seconds to load, guess what your kids are going to learn? Yup, impatience. Your own behaviour sets the stage. If you gripe incessantly at the slow cashier or honk your horn the instant a light turns green, your children will absorb that frustration like a parched sponge. Instead, show them how to handle delays gracefully. Sigh dramatically if you must (this is real life, after all), but try a calm comment like, “Looks like we have a wait—maybe we can think of a silly story while we’re standing here?” Lead by example, and your kids might just start copying your newfound Zen vibes.

3. Let Them Earn Their Rewards Over Time

Kids want everything now. Scratch that: kids want everything yesterday. To help them realise that not all gratification is instant, give them something to look forward to that requires patience. Create a simple rewards chart where they earn stickers or marks for each day they wait for something. Maybe they want a new toy, but instead of handing it over the moment they mention it, give them a timeframe—like a week—during which they can gather “patience points.” Each day they wait without nagging (too much) earns them a star. By the time they get their prize, they’ve learned that waiting actually pays off.

4. Tackle the Tough Task of Boredom

Patience and boredom are close cousins. If your child believes boredom is the worst fate imaginable, they’ll do anything to escape it, including losing their cool when forced to wait. But boredom can be a breeding ground for creativity. Introduce activities that encourage kids to entertain themselves when they’re stuck waiting—like those deadly dull car trips or the eternity between ordering food and it arriving at a restaurant.

KidsChaos-PetPlan-Lizard-photo-with-pencils

Carry a “boredom kit” in your bag: crayons, a silly notepad, maybe a squishy toy or two. Challenge them to think up a short story, count all the blue cars they see, or guess how many French fries are on the plate before the waiter arrives. By giving them tools to deal with downtime, you subtly teach them that waiting is an opportunity rather than a nightmare.

5. Make Waiting Tangible: Timers and Visual Aids

Kids struggle with abstract concepts. “Later” might as well mean “never” in their world. Use timers, hourglasses, or even a phone app with a countdown to show them that time is moving, and the wait will indeed end. Watching the sand slip through an hourglass or the numbers tick down on a digital timer helps kids understand that waiting isn’t just an arbitrary punishment—it’s a measurable, finite thing. And when the buzzer finally rings, celebrate it like a victory parade.

6. Teach Them the Power of Distraction

Waiting doesn’t have to mean staring at the wall. Show your child how to occupy their mind productively. Suggest playing a quick round of “I Spy,” humming a favorite tune, or counting backwards from 20. You might be thinking, “Aren’t I just tricking them?” Yes, but in the best possible way. Distraction is a skill they’ll use for the rest of their lives. By finding ways to pass the time, kids learn they have the power to ease their own impatience.

7. Turn to Good Old-Fashioned Puzzles: Hello, Sudoku

Look, I know Sudoku doesn’t scream “kid fun” at first glance, but bear with me. Sudoku (or any puzzle, really) can teach patience indirectly. Start with a super-simple, kid-friendly Sudoku or a puzzle that’s more pictures than numbers. Show them how they can’t rush through it, they have to pause, think, and figure out the solution step-by-step. As they practice, they’ll realize that slow and steady can be both satisfying and rewarding. They’ll feel mighty proud when they finally solve that puzzle they wanted to give up on after the first 10 seconds.

Not a Sudoku family? Try jigsaw puzzles, mazes, or even building a model car together. Anything that requires sustained focus and can’t be bulldozed through at top speed becomes a mini patience workshop.

8. Praise the Patience You Do See

Kids respond to positive reinforcement like cats to catnip. If you notice your child handling a waiting situation calmly – even if it’s for 30 seconds – praise them. “Wow, I saw how you waited quietly without complaining. That was really grown-up of you!” Positive recognition cements the idea that patience is something to be proud of. Eventually, they’ll go looking for reasons to impress you with their calmness – because who doesn’t love a pat on the back?

9. Share Stories of People Who Waited for Greatness

Kids love stories. Use that to your advantage. Talk about famous individuals who had to wait for success: inventors who tried hundreds of times before getting it right, athletes who trained for years before winning a medal, or chefs who spent hours perfecting a recipe. Show them that waiting patiently often results in something amazing. This makes the concept more relatable than just nagging them to “be patient” because, well, you said so.

10. Keep Your Cool When They Can’t

Kids lose their patience partly because they pick up on the grown-ups’ stress. If your child starts whining, complaining, or demanding instant gratification, try responding calmly rather than snapping back. “I know it’s hard to wait, but it’ll be worth it,” said in a gentle tone, can work better than an eye roll or a sigh of exasperation. Of course, you’re human – you might slip and roll your eyes anyway. Just remember that each calm response you manage to muster is helping build their sense of security and trust in the waiting process.

11. Involve Them in Slow Activities

Consider incorporating some sloooow pastimes into your family’s routine. Think gardening: watching seeds grow requires more patience than waiting for paint to dry. Or baking bread from scratch: kneading, waiting for it to rise, waiting some more… all these steps show your child that good things (like warm, fresh bread) are worth the wait. Crafts like papier-mâché or painting a detailed picture also teach that patience can pay off in the form of something beautiful at the end.

12. Gamify Waiting Whenever Possible

If you’re out in the wild (i.e., the grocery store) and your kid’s fuse is running short, turn waiting into a game. Can they stand on one foot until the line moves forward one customer? Can they guess how many people in line are wearing hats? Gamifying waiting transforms the experience into a silly challenge rather than a grim endurance test. Your child might even start looking for small waiting periods as opportunities for a quick mental game. Now that’s progress!

13. Acknowledge Their Feelings, Even If They’re Impatient

Telling a child “Don’t be upset” when they’re already huffing and puffing is about as helpful as telling a tornado not to swirl. Instead, acknowledge their feelings: “I know you really want that ice cream right now. Waiting can be tough.” Validating their frustration shows that you understand and respect their emotions. Once they feel heard, they’re more likely to calm down and work through the waiting with you as an ally rather than an enemy blocking their path to dessert.

14. Celebrate the Journey, Not Just the Destination

Lastly, remind your kids that the waiting process itself can be fun, illuminating, or creative if they let it be. The car trip to Grandma’s can become a journey of spotting funny billboards, playing verbal games, and singing off-key duets. By highlighting the enjoyable parts of the wait itself, you teach them a valuable life skill: appreciating the experience rather than just the reward at the end.

In the end, it’s a marathon, not a sprint!

This is a collaborative post.

FREE printables, halloween, key stage 2, kids

Halloween Pumpkin Paper Pom-Pom FREE printable

Pumpkin-Halloween-Pompom-Kids-ChaosHalloween-pumpkin-face-template-Kids-ChaosWe got a little bit seasonal and decided to turn our giant orange paper pom-pom into a PUMPKIN!
So here’s a halloween pumpkin FREE printable for you to download, print off and stick with a Pritt stick onto to the paper pom-pom – how cool is this! If you like this, you’ll like 11yo’s spin on it – with his FREE downloadable Witch’s face here.Witch and Pumpkin Halloween Pompoms

Really easy Pumpkin face – halloween pumpkin free printable, have a go by clicking here for our FREE downloadable template just print off, and cut out the shapes, in fact, print two, and use one as a template for your pumpkin this year too!!

step-1-4-make-a-paper-pom-pomclick here for FULL HOW TO instructions on making the paper pom-poms

12 simple steps – really easy to follow, our kids have been making them in ALL sorts of colours – we’ve even mixed up different shades of green here…
If you fancy having a go yourself click here.

Free printable Pumpkin face, just attach to giant paper pom-pom or use as a template to carve your pumpkin!

If you have a thing for giant paper pompoms, click here to see our crepe paper version, with raindrops!

This post was first published Sept 29 2014. inspired by a *how to* video by RedTedArt and myself

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

crafts, father's day, FREE printables, kids

Tin Can crafts – savings tin

How about a Tin Can Savings Tin?

With Father’s Day looming, we decided to do something a bit different for Dad and as one of his foibles is collecting coins. *Saving* £2 coins in piles around the house, particularly on shelves… So we came up with a genius tidy-up plan…tin can fathers day savings

We decided to tidy up the favourite shelf for Mr.KidsChaos, our bedroom mantle piece.To assist with the tidying, we made him some Savings Tins, and they look nice too don’t you think?

Can we call this photo a #Shelfie?
Our bedroom ‘Shelf’ is often very cluttered, with our favourite wedding pressie painting from Jill Barker & Jonathan at Middlewick, and the odd pair of his daft colourful sunglasses. His collection of coins tumble constantly, as they get knocked and fall to the floor and it makes me go a little crazy!!

FREE printable tin can printThe kids decided he needed somewhere to save his £2 coins, and told me what the text should read on the tin cans. They picked the colours, and I designed the graphics. Bonus is, you can print these off and do the same thing too, for FREE!

Simply print them off here, and trim them out, and glue them on to your clean tin cans.

Don’t tell him, but I often BORROW the odd coin when we’re dashing off to Martial Arts club, or Cubs…. Sssh, he never reads this anyway, he’ll NEVER know. Perhaps if he saves enough, I could BORROW some of it for a bit of Bathroom DIY…watch this space!

For more FREE printables for tin cans, click here for a fun game for the summer – kick the can.

For more FREE Father’s Day Printables, try our Monster Truck card and Jigsaw Puzzle Cards.

And other uses for bean tins, and soup cans can be seen over on A Greener Life For Us, using up old paint to make plant and pencil pots click here.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on instagram, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!

Ali also writes over on AGreenerLifeforus.com

crafts, create, FREE printables, halloween, kids, monster

Milk Carton Skull Lanterns

So with much delight, we introduce our latest invention, the Milk Carton Skull Lanterns!Milk Carton Skull Lanterns

Spike age 14:

We really wanted to have a go at making some skull lanterns, and thought the milk carton would be perfect for this, and it wasn’t until we started planning the graphics for it that we realised how brilliant it was that the handle itself created two brilliant indentations that were perfect for the skull’s eye sockets!!

We’ve since made LOADS of these are they are so easy to make, you can either print off the FREE printable here, or use marker pens, like these * affiliate links which work really well on plastic bottles – for full instructions watch my Mum’s incredibusy youtube video here.

For the PRINTABLE Skull’s face template click here

For more FREE printables for Halloween click here for Pumpkins
and here for brilliant Witches Hats
Some fab paper skull potato print Halloween party bags
How about Toffee Apples!
And some wonderful FREE printable, Skull Bunting

Ali also blogs over on incredibusy.com and FunCraftsKids.com and is a lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

crafts, FREE printables, kids

FREE downloadable Butterfly Mandala colouring sheet

FREE downloadable Butterfly Mandala colouring sheet

butterfly mandala colouring sheetThe mini beast invasion is here! And you’ll love this wonderful FREE downloadable Butterfly Mandala colouring sheet – CLICK HERE to download!

If you like coloring, have a go at downloading this fun template – a colouring sheet with a fabulous repeat pattern of a butterfly, logo courtesy of ethical shoe brand Po-Zu.com

And perfect for a our instagram photo challenge theme this week – #bugsandbutterflies #kidscrafts101 theme with @buggyandbuddy ! Check out co hosts @babbledabbledo @redtedart and @incredibusy for more ideas too!
🐛🐝🕷🐞🐜🐝🐛🐌🐞🐜🕷🐝🐛🐞🐌
Find out more about the conservation of butterflies, moths and our environment over on the Butterfly Conservation website – formed by a small group of dedicated naturalists in 1968 following the alarming decline of many beautiful butterflies.

kidschaos-Logo-Repeat-butterfly-colouring-in-sheetMost British butterflies remain a cause for concern, with three quarters of our native species in decline. Four butterflies and over 60 moths became extinct last century. We aim to halt and reverse these declines. Our vision is of a world rich in butterflies for future generations to enjoy. Butterflies are beautiful and intrinsically valuable. Together with moths, their sensitivity to environmental change makes them valuable indicators of the health of the countryside.

Falling numbers are an early warning to all wildlife that cannot be ignored. We have more than 25,000 members in the UK and 32 volunteer Branches throughout the British Isles. We employ over 50 people including many highly qualified scientists, making us the world’s largest research institute for butterflies and moths.

Reference:

Po-Zu.com

butterfly-conservation.org

chinese new year, crafts, FREE printables, key stage 2, kids, life

Hand Coloured Chinese Lanterns

Chinese New Year PrintablesMy little blonde boys are both incredibly fascinated by the Orient, and at the beginning of every year are keen to go to Chinatown to celebrate Chinese New Year. We are lucky enough to be close to London’s Chinatown and a couple of years ago they bought some rather lovely window clings, graphic and colourful, but really too big for their bedroom windows in our Edwardian house.

Chinese-New-Year-Printables-KidsChaos-4Chinese-New-Year-Printables-KidsChaos-3 So this year, we came up with a fun way of making their own, from a template I created here (and if you click here and here you can download and print these Chinese New Year printables yourself too).

You will need:

Printable-Chinese-New-Year-graphics-KidsChaos-2-of-21) Print off the Chinese New Year printables template here and here
2) Packet of Sharpie Pens (*which you can get here in the UK  and here in the US)
3) Pack of Clear CD wallets or any plastic stationery sleeves
4) Blu tack

Instructions:

Printable-Chinese-New-Year-graphics-KidsChaos-1-of-21) once you’ve printed off the Chinese New Year printables template, blu tack the clear plastic cd wallet into position over the graphic and start tracing around the illustration with a black sharpie pen.

2) Then simply colour in with a selection of reds, yellow, oranges. Or if you fancy a change, try a range of greens and blues – that looks great too!

3) When you’ve finished, take the CD wallet and blu tack it to the window! voila!Chinese-New-Year-Printables-KidsChaos-5

To watch a video of how we did these Chinese New Year printables, pop over to Red Ted Art’s YouTube channel here where we have made a guest appearance (again!) showing you how to do this, you’ll notice that I got bored with the colouring in bit, and Maggy had to take over… as a Chinese inspired art project however, both of my boys LOVED doing these, and it kept them busy and quiet for AGES!
10 yo specifically asked for a sheep… as it IS year of the sheep!

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and FunCraftsKids.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

 *affiliate links for your convenience… 🙂

crafts, easter, FREE printables, kids

Leaping rabbits and hares have a real Spring feel about them don’t they? I’ve been doodling them forever, so I thought I’d put them to good use, and couldn’t get the Chas and Dave song out of my head, (and I fancied a denim pocket purse craft) – Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit – exactly what you do when you are on the telephone? Yep – Soooo, I thought, iPhone wallet?

denim pocket purses

Looking around the house, I came across some old denim jeans in the bag destined for the charity shop, and as we love to upcycle in our house, cut the back pockets off! My quest for a denim pocket purse craft was realised!
Yes? Well I liked it, and so did the kids so I’ve made these for their iPods, using little self-adhesive velcro dots as closings on the inside of the denim pockets, and we’re looking for a use for the little coin denim pocket – ideas welcome? Full instructions below…

FREE leaping rabbit printable

Instructions:

  1. Carefully cut the back pockets out of the denim jeans, so that you retain both layers of fabric, thus creating your OWN denim pocket.
  2. Find (and iron) some contrasting fabric to applique onto the denim pocket purse for the rabbit shapes. (I used some fabric I had acquired from ReUsefulUK and my neighbour RedTedArt‘s hubbies old work shirt.
  3. Print off the FREE printable rabbits template, to the scale you require for the three leaping rabbits to fit comfortably on the back pocket (the scale here is for a man’s jeans, so you may find you need to print at 90% for smaller pockets).
  4. I used Spraymount glue to lightly adhere the rabbit sheet to the BACK of the contrasting fabric, (so that when you remove the paper from the reverse of the rabbits, the rabbits will be facing the right way… your choice!)
  5. Peel the paper template from the back of the rabbits. And position on the denim pockets. I used a PVA glue to stick the rabbits onto the denim pocket purse, and gave them a light coat over the top too…
  6. Add your velcro dots to the inside of the pocket to make a secure closure.

These would make FANTASTIC little denim pocket purse bags for mini-eggs for a quick Easter gift too!

For other Spring and Easter ideas click here for our Daffodil cookies

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello! And I’l adding this to Lizzie’s #MagpieMonday as I love to salvage, upcycle and re-use stuff!

crafts, create, FREE printables, gardening, gardening with kids, google+ hangouts

Who would have thought we would be making a fairy tale craft tonight – Fridays are usually our ‘film night’ after a full-on week at school.

fairytale crafts

HOWEVER, I was taken to one side by my son’s teacher on Thursday to discuss his behaviour – and we between us to set a reward system in place… sigh, just when I thought we were getting somewhere!

So, the plan is, a thumbs up from the teacher = one reward point. And so the Jack and the Beanstalk fairytale craft reward chart was invented. And he is really engaged with it so far – we found an old wooden shelf I’d been hoarding since our kitchen cupboard makeovers (11yo wanted me to write that if you don’t have a piece of board, a sheet of paper or card will do), and found a wiggly stick on the way home from school – and got busy!.

Jack and the Beanstalk printable

To get started, cut out your leaves – If you use the FREE printable here – gently stick the sheet to another blank A4 sheet with a low tack magic tape, and cut around the leaves. This gives you a printed leaf, and a plain white leaf. Place the plain white leaves in position on the board, and using them as stencils, put a little paint on a scrunched up piece of kitchen paper, and dab around the edge of the paper leaf to reveal a leaf shape.

Glue the branch of the fairy tale craft beanstalk onto your board (oh yes, I DID use a glue gun), and pop the green leaves somewhere safe. We used a CD sleeve, which we glued to the top of the board to make a pocket to hold the leaves. And rewarded the boy with his first ‘thumbs up’ leaf at the foot of the beanstalk – here’s to a completed beanstalk for Jack to climb up by the end of the week… Also on the blog today – how to make the Snow White Mirror.

kidschaos and redtedart hangout

If you’d like to see the finished fairy tale craft article, click the youtube link here, I got together with Missie Lizzie who talked magic beans, Anthea with her elves’ shoes, Kelly talked Rapunzel, and Maggy at Red Ted Art (talking three little pigs) who hosted a Fairy Tale Craft google+ hangout.

Oh, and I’m on twitter and Instagram is my new favourite thing, I also blog at incredibusy.com, and Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!