FREE printables, halloween, key stage 2, kids

Halloween Pumpkin Paper Pom-Pom FREE printable

We 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.

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!!

click 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…

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!!

The 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!

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

The 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.

Most 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 New Year printables

Hand Coloured Chinese Lanterns

My 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.

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:

1) 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:

1) 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!

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

Denim pocket purse FREE leaping rabbit printable

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?

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…

Instructions:

Carefully cut the back pockets out of the denim jeans, so that you retain both layers of fabric, thus creating your OWN denim pocket.
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.
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).
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!)
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…
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

Fairy tale crafts reward chart

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.

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!.

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.

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 aGreenerLifeforus.com, and Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!