We all have that one item in our homes that we have copious amounts of however, when we need them we can never seem to find them! In our house its craft scissors!

 

My daughter, Vivienne now 5 years old, and I decided to make a scissor holder from an empty box and toilet rolls! This project has two benefits; it was a project to teach my little one about delayed gratification and to keep those infamous missing scissors in one place….well for now at least.

 

Here’s what you need:ingredients 2

 

Box and Stanley knife to cut to size

Paint- choose a few colours

Glitter

Beads

Crafty type odds and ends to stick on box and toilet rolls

Duct tapeingredientts 1 copy

Potato

Sharp knife

Textured craft paint brush

Old sponge

 

Step 1:

Cut the box to size so that the toilet rolls fit inside the box… This must be done by an adult.

 

Step 2:

Paint the box! Once the box had been painted we left it to dry over night.

My daughter has a mild obsession with glitter at the moment, so once the box had dried we decorated it with glitter, beads and all sorts of exciting things!

 

Step 3:

Decorate each toilet roll.

The challenge with this step is that my daughter lost a bit of interest in the activity one the box had been decorated. To keep us on track, we decided to decorate the toilet rolls in several different ways.

 

1.Felt: Felt is a great textural item for children to develop their tactile senses so, we stuck felt onto one of the toilet rolls.

 

2.Potato stamping: This one was particularly fun. At first I started cutting a square out of the potato, but soon remembered that I have a draw full of baking fondant molds to press out shapes! So it’s really easy, you cut the potato in half and make your shape. You dip your potato in some paint, and stamp the toilet roll! My daughter loved the stamping, and it is tremendous for practicing different grips.

4 copy3.Textured paint rollers: We dipped the roller into the paint, and painted the toilet roll. It was very interesting to see the patterns. Vivienne decided that she then wanted to spruce up one of the already painted toilet rolls and put a coloured pattern over the plain toilet roll.

textured roller copy4.The beaded toilet roll: We covered one of the toilet rolls in beads using glue to stick them on. The glitter then made another appearance and very soon anther toilet roll was covered in glitter. To keep the glitter and beads in one place, use a small plastic tray. With children mess is inevitable, but the tray helps keep it a little contained and makes it a little easier for small hands to pick up the beads.

3 copy5.Glitter sticks: We also had some glitter stickers, and put some on some of the toilet rolls.

1 copy6.Sponging: This is one of my favourite techniques, much to my daughter’s dismay. I love sponging. I think this comes for the 90’s when the big thing was to sponge everything! So we added that to our list. Take an old sponge, dab it in paint and apply to the toilet roll.

2 copyOnce we were finished, and put the toilet rolls inside the box, we realised the box looked a bit messy where we cut it. Luckily we had some duct tape, so put that on the edges to neaten it up.

 

My daughter really enjoyed experimenting with all the textures while my favourite part was watching her plan what to do with each toilet roll (even though it took a lot of persuasion not to put glitter on all of them!)

 

I would have loved to paint the inside of the toilet rolls too, but let’s leave that for another rainy day!

6 copyWhat we learned from this craft:

 

We experimented with different textures: Sponging, textured paint brushes and potato stamping. These all expose little hands to different textures, and holding the various mediums in different grips, working different hand and finger muscles.

Delayed gratification: This was without a doubt accomplished with this task. It took a few days to finish this project.

Spatial planning: By letting your child put each toilet roll into the box they have to plan where each toilet roll fits.  We also practised our counting while putting them inside!

Angela Morony
Clamber Club – Craighall Babies
083 501 1187
craighallbabies@clamberclub.com
www.clamberclub.com