Crafting with Children - Planes and Trains

Thanks to Nora and Rasa from Malahide library for showing us how to make paper planes and colourful trains this week.

Myself and my colleague Rasa coordinate our blog posts on crafts. We work in Malahide Library and Rasa is our creative mastermind! Anyone who has visited us might remember the Valentine’s Day hearts she made by folding the pages of books. They really were beautiful. Or the Christmas trees made from recycled paper? She's basically a natural when it comes to crafting. I am more of a Pinterest gal (Rasa doesn't use it, gasp!) and I tend to throw whatever is in the crafting box onto the table, cross my fingers and hope that end result looks somewhat like the inspiration photo. 

Between us we have two girls and a boy, aged 2, 5 and 7. 

Last week’s blog was about making what we could from toilet rolls, and this week Danielius kindly requested a craft that he would enjoy playing with. Rasa has knocked it out of the park this week with her paper airplanes (up to this point I could never make one that successfully flew!). See below for her step by step guide. She also did a really lovely video showing us all how to make an airplane from recycled material. Click the link to take you to Fingal Libraries YouTube channel to watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4jdSIftcVQ

I made a train with my two girls. Definitely not high tech but the Almost Five Year Old really enjoyed assembling it and it's in an envelope already to be sent to Granny and Grandad. The 2 year old emptied the button box all over the floor and played with its contents until we were finished. So win win. 

Faces initially fell in my house when I announced we would make a train for arts and crafts. Well, the Almost-Five-Year-Old’s face fell, the two year old has acquired a new habit of just copying her older sister. Our conversation went something like this...

No I am not making a train

But Rasa and Danielius are making a plane, poor Danielius doesn't want to flowers or any more animals, let's be fair.

Silence

Look we can make it purple.or pink

Slight smile

Can we add sequins and glitter?

(now I strongly dislike glitter, it's on a par with play-doh in my dislike pile!) 

Well kid,how about we make it pink with hearts.

And buttons for wheels?

You drive a hard bargain missy, let's do this!

The beauty of this type of craft is you can make it as complicated or as simple as you like. I had intended to use coloured paper, but I came across coloured sheets of foam that I had wondered what to do with and it worked out grand. Then just add whatever bits and bobs you have around; sequins, stickers etc. So get the pritt stick ready!,Happy assembling and gluing!