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DIY Owl Easter Eggs
If you like decorating eggs for Easter, this craft tutorial will show you how to paint eggs as a couple of cute owls! I'm hardly a big owl fan, but somehow owls keep sneaking into my art again and again. When I attempt to explain it to myself, I think that owls simply...
Spray Bottle Painting
Spray bottle painting is a fun refreshing way to create art, and everyone in the family can get involved! Additional bonus? It isn't as messy as it may sound. There are times when art activity is meant to produce results. For instance, when we made a watercolour map,...
25 DIY Toys from Nature
Do your kids like collecting rocks, branches and moss? These awesome nature finds can be turned into fun DIY toys! After months of bleak winter, I have to constantly remind myself that under the feet of snow grass is getting ready to grow again. The last month, it was...
How to Make Galaxy Easter Eggs
Kids will love making galaxy Easter eggs! They are so easy and fun to paint. My two-year-old toddler made two of these space eggs. This post contains Amazon Affiliate links for your convenience. Easter is a time of joy, especially for children, and what better...
20 Ways to Reuse Wooden Blocks
Since our son's birth, we have developed a fondness for handmade wooden toys: they seem so sturdy and reliable, looking as if they were coming straight from a loving grandpa's workshop. Untreated wood smells and feels pleasant, but it also provides a nice surface for...
Should Boys Play with Dolls: a Dad’s Perspective
When I was a kid, my sister was always after me to play dolls with her. "Sure, I will just grab my BB gun," I would say. She even bought me a Ken doll as a birthday gift one year, in an attempt to rope me in - at an age when news of it would have been socially...
Rainbow Sand Art
Since watching artists creating sand animations on a light table, I have had it in the back of my mind to try it some day. It may have taken me years to find a chance on my own, but Budster has started showing a lot of interest in drawing, so we decided to try some...
Make-a-Monster Blocks
Wooden building blocks are a classic toy for open-ended play. So I try not to be too hard on myself for picking up yet another set for my kid whenever I see a good deal at a second-hand toy store or dollar store. When I have a pretty good assortment, I can turn them...
Lego Doodle Cars
We hear a lot about cars around our place... we draw them, we build them, we read about them, and we trip over them! Vehicles have been Budster's immutable passion for about a year, and we begin to wonder if he will ever tire of them. He delights that there...
Peek-a-Boo Book from Envelopes
As a part of the Junk Play series that focuses on creating crafts and toys for kids from recyclables, we made a little peek-a-boo book from envelopes. Lately, my son has been very partial to sea creatures - whales, sharks, and dolphins. We took him to see the...
Send a Book on an Adventure: Bookcrossing for Children
Have you ever lost a book? It has happened to me a couple of times. But have you ever lost a book on purpose? I have not had such an opportunity until a few days ago when our family decided to participate in bookcrossing. As it turned out, there is...
Make a Train Whistle!
Trains are a going concern around our house, of late. A complicated network of wooden tracks crisscrosses our living room, so that safe navigation from one end to the other looks something like a game of hopscotch. Ensconced in the centre of this empire is a happy...
Wooden Bangles for Animal Lovers
If you look around my blog, you will find out that wood is one of my favourite materials to paint on. I like how absorbent it is, yet how smoothly paint goes onto the wooden surface, and how well it bonds. Because it is more interesting than painting on a rectangular...
Make Rainbow Sand Blocks
Adding unique wooden blocks to our collection is always fun. Who knows what will become of them! They may act as stained-glass windows in a three-story palace, or as sun-catchers on our windowsill. I wanted to get some new specialty blocks for my son, and a couple of...
Best Board Games for Nurturing Creativity
Board games did not come into my life until I was in my early twenties. I had some experience playing Monopoly when I was a little girl, and there were a few versions of Snakes and Ladders, but I did not discover the variety of board games available until my best...
Make a Lantern Card: “You’re the Light of My Life”
There are plenty of stereotypical images that can be used to good effect when making a card to celebrate an event, but a handmade card to celebrate your love for someone may require something more personal. When creating a card for my husband, I cut our silhouettes...
Make a Set of Wooden Coasters with Family Silhouette Portaits
Make a set of wooden coasters with portraits of your family members, and never forget which cup was whose again! Sadly, I was looking at the row of glasses and cups that once again lined up next to the sink. It seemed like for every plate in the house, I washed at...
How to Make a Balance Bench: DIY tutorial
We are adamant supporters of active play and development of gross motor skills! For children, they are linked with brain development, healthy habits, growing self-esteem and physical strength. In other words, running around is just as important as sitting down with...
Best Handmade Toys from Adventure in a Box – 2014
These are a few things that happened to me for the first time in 2014: I was called "mama" by my son, tried fried ice-cream, grew ground cherries in my garden, learnt to use an angle grinder, broke my laptop's screen by simply pushing my thumb into it, and started my...
Wooden Road Tracks and Ramps: DIY Tutorial
I never thought that vehicles would take over our household, but as Budster's interest in all things wheeled continues, garages, bridges, tracks and roads spread from wall to wall. This handmade set of wooden road tracks and ramps was among the birthday gifts for our...
Colour Exploration in the Snow
Snow and ice have become our seasonal favourite for filling sensory bins. We may get tired of them by February, but right now they seem so exciting. One cannot overlook the fact that they are also free and pretty easy to clean, since everything melts in the end. So...
Bath Bomb Christmas Ornaments with Surprise Inside!
You can throw together these bath bomb Christmas ornaments either as handmade stocking stuffer gifts for kids or together with them as kid-made gifts for teachers, friends and relatives. They're easy and fun! This post contains Amazon Affiliate links for your...
Festive Spice Mix: Kid-made Gift
If you are looking for a kid-made gift idea, here is our favourite from this week. Did we ever have fun, creating these rainbow spice mixes. Caution: very spicy! This post contains Amazon Affiliate links for your convenience. Toddlers have a stage when they cannot get...
DIY Toys for Kids from Recyclable Materials
When children are bored, there is nothing like contents of a recycling bin to quickly stir up some fun easy projects! ...Or some elaborate ones. It depends on how carried away you get. Just today, my husband and son spent their evening, pretending that a cardboard box...
Mitten: Kid-Made Christmas Ornament
Make a mitten Christmas ornament from buttons and paper, using a free printable template! We made these ornaments together with my son when he was just two - we still have them and put them on each year. We love adding new handmade ornaments onto our tree. It is a...
Christmas Tree Clay Ornaments
I planned to make a set of simple Christmas tree ornaments, but my boy turned them into funny googly-eyed ornaments! The post contains affiliate links for your convenience. Our Christmas tree is up! It is a great motivation for making more Christmas ornaments. This...
Winter Worlds in Miniature
Winter is coming, and it is a time when sensory bins and small worlds turn white too. Little people and animals are also eager to skate, throw snowballs and build snowmen. Here is a collection of our favourite ideas on how to bring winter in the playroom! I am not...
Luminescent Christmas Ornaments
Like other children, my son is rather partial to things that glow and shine. It was an interesting experience for him to make a Christmas ornament that glowed and shone. Since Budster was a newborn, he was fascinated by lamps. He would lay in his bed and switch his...
Hatching Frogs with 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids
When my friend Asia from Fun at Home with Kids offered me her upcoming book 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids to read, I was beyond myself with excitement. I have been a frequent visitor to her site for a long time, and I was very curious how it would get turned...
Ice Age Sensory Play
A new age has come to our playroom! An age when yogourt containers suddenly become precious, and there is an elephant living in the freezer. Budster has become fond of ice excavation, so we are in the midst of an Ice Age - everything will get frozen! Two days ago, we...