Weaving

I was looking for some ideas to use for craft at Playgroup. It had to be mess free due to our venue for the week. I melded a couple of ideas, and came up with this:

It's very easy. Cut a circle in a paper plate. Punch holes around the edge of the circle. Tie a length of wool to one hole. Put some sticky tape around the other end of the wool (makes it stiffer and easier to thread). Colour around the edge of the plate. Thread the wool through the holes.

The by product is the circle cut from the middle of the plate. That can also be used  for some more threading and drawing as Miss 3 showed here:

At playgroup the kids (ages 1 to 4) all seemed to enjoy it. Some only wanted to colour, others only wanted to weave. Some even turned their masterpiece into a kite (tied a string onto it).

Woolen Snowflake

With the cold weather here we needed some indoor craft activities. I had some left over wool and thought it would be fun to make some snowflakes to decorate the room. After I made the first one, Miss 3 and Mr 5 decided they'd like to make their own. Miss 3 needed some help to hold it while she wound for the first half, and they both needed help to change colours, but once I wrote numbers on the sticks Mr 5 did really well winding by himself.

I started by putting a small roll of sticky tape between the paddle pop sticks to keep them in place. I then put a slip knot arond one stick and did a few cross overs in the centre to get the kids started.

The weaving went around first going over the top of the stick and then under: over 1, under 1, over 2, under 2 etc. We tried to tuck any joining thread ends to the back.

To finish I left a tail of wool to hang it up and tied a few knots. That was when the snow flake stopped being a snowflake and started being a kite. The kids took them outside and had a good run around.