Keeping the Kiddos Busy

If you have a garden or a backyard or even just a few indoor plants, you and your children can gather a few leaves.  There are so many activities you can do with them. Just from among the activities that were featured in this blog, you can make leaf rubbings , leaf prints , or negative leaf prints using the splatter painting technique . Then, you can also press them and make projects with them. Just insert them between the pages of an old telephone directory, put some heavy books or other heavy items on top of the directory for weight, and leave the leaves alone for a few days.  When they are already dry, you can use them to decorate cards, book marks, or other items.  Or you can simply make pretty pictures with them. Another thing you can do with pressed leaves is to make an herbarium. "Herbarium" is just a fancy name for a leaf scrap book.  Just mount  the leaves on one sheet of paper each and write descriptions of each plant, and then bind the sheet...

(Photo credit:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Head_silhouette.svg) Silhouette art looks simple but dramatic.  And you can easily make silhouette profiles of your friends and family members.   You will first need a sheet of paper that is big enough to accommodate the side-view shadow of your subject: manila paper, construction paper, the backside of old gift wrappers, etc.  Tape the paper on a wall, light a lamp or a flashlight, and have your subject sit between the paper and the lamp or flashlight.  Station the subject so that the light casts the shadow of his or her profile on the paper.  While your subject sits, trace the outline of her shadow with a pen or crayon. Cut out the profile.  You can either trace it on a white sheet of paper and then color it a dark color, or trace it on good-quality, dark-colored paper, cut that out, and mount it on a sheet of white paper.  You can add any decorations you want (like borders),...

Splatter painting is fun and easy. Just dip an old toothbrush in paint, flick the bristles towards you, and let the paint droplets fall on a sheet of paper. (This can get messy, so you would want to protect your table or other nearby areas.) You can experiment with different color combinations.  Or you can put a leaf or a paper cut-out of any shape you want on a sheet of paper and then splatter-paint over it.  When you remove the leaf or the cut-out, you will see a silhouette of the leaf or paper cut-out. Splatter painting can be used to decorate cards, bookmarks, and other paper items.  You can also display your splatter painting as stand-alone art.  Whatever you do, you can easily make something beautiful with splatter art.

(Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Paper_beads.jpeg) Stringing beads into a necklace or bracelet is another craft that is considered easy enough for children.  However, I originally did not think of it as a good lockdown activity because while most households have sewing kits with a stash of thread in them, obtaining beads is a different matter. But I learned that it is possible to make beads out of paper.  The procedure is simple: cut the paper into narrow triangles, add glue to one side, roll them up with the aid of a toothpick or barbecue stick, seal them with glue or clear nail polish.  By making variations on the procedure , you can make beads of different shapes and sizes. You can use any kind of paper you want.  You can even use the pages of old newspapers and magazines for a unique look.   You can also make sophisticated jewelry patterns . Making jewelry out of paper beads is fun, but wearing it is even more fun. Who ...

The idea behind stamp printing is simple: apply paint to your stamp, and then stamp it on the surface you want to decorate while the paint is still wet.  You can get creative with the stamps you make and use. A common stamp printing project is potato printing , where you carve out your design on a potato half and use the potato half as a stamp.  You can try printing the natural textures of other vegetables and fruits .  You can also make stamps from recycled materials.    You can also be creative with the surfaces you decorate.  If you have textile paint, you can use stamp printing to decorate shirts. You can decorate wooden surfaces too.  You can use stamp printing to make cards, book marks, gift wrappers, and other similar items. Again, the possibilities are endless.

What would your ideal city, town, or village look like? You and your children can make a paper model of it. The architectural firm Foster and Partners has released templates for children to make paper models of houses and other structures.  The templates can be downloaded here .  You and your children can assemble and decorate the models using paper, scissors, paste or glue, and any other supplies you have at home.  Then you can arrange them to look like the city, town, or village you like.  You can even share photos of your creations by sending them to fandpmarketing@outlook.com Lockdown is a good time for sone healthy dreaming about the kind of world your children want to build.  Who knows?  Some future architects, engineers,  and urban planners might be inspired by this project and one day actually build that world.

Paper weaving is easy to learn and to do.  For very young children, it is a good way to introduce the concepts of "over" and "under".   The only materials needed are paper, scissors, and glue or paste or adhesive tape.  Your designs can be as easy or as complicated as you want; you can experiment with different color combinations.  In any case, the result will look pretty just the same. Some instructions to get started are here and here . You can post the weaving on the wall as a work of art. You can also use paper weaving to make cards, bookmarks, and other similar items. Older children who want a bit of a challenge might even want to try weaving paper baskets.  Here are instructions to make two kinds of baskets: one out of colored construction paper, another out of rolled strips of newspaper. Here are more ideas of things you can do with paper weaving.  There are countless others in the Internet.

Image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Einbanddurchreibung_von_Stempeln_%280116%29.jpg "Tripsigraph" is just a fancy term for "rubbing". A rubbing is very easy to make. Put any textured object - a coin, a leaf, a doily, etc. - under a sheet of paper, then, using a crayon or a soft-grade pencil, rub the surface of the paper that covers the textured item. You will end up with an impression of the item on the sheet of paper. Your kids (and most likely you too) will enjoy making rubbings. And there are many things you can do with them. They can stand alone as works of art, or you can mount them on thicker paper or cardboard  to make cards, bookmarks, gift tags, place cards, and other paper crafts. Have fun!

UPDATE: Philstar  already revised its article about this initiative. Dr. Nicole Perreras, a doctor in RITM, is requesting kids to make hand-made get well cards for Covid-19 patients. The cards can be scanned and emailed to covidletters@gmail.com . Someone will print them out, and the patients will each get a card as part of their breakfast trays. Some ideas for making cards can be found here . But any hand-made card, no matter how simple and made with whatever materials you have at home, will brighten the day of someone who needs it most. Who knows? Perhaps the smile that your kid's card brings to the patient who receives it may just be that push the patient's body needs to fight and defeat that virus.

Got scrap pieces of paper (literally any kind, including leftover cartolina from previous projects, old magazines, left-over gift wrappers, etc.)? Bond paper? Paste or glue? A pair of scissors? Good. Cutting and pasting paper has always been an art activity for children in schools. There is no reason they cannot do it at home. More than that, there is no reason adults cannot enjoy it too. Cut-and-paste art has, in fact, been considered serious art. The cut-outs by the twentieth-century artist Henri Matisse are considered masterpieces. With techniques as simple as cutying and pasting, you and your kids can make masterpieces of your own. ( IMPORTANT: Please supervise very young children in using the pair of scissors. ) (Two cut-and-paste art works by Matisse)

When I was 10 years old, an aunt gave me a book on origami. I really loved it. That book gave me countless of fun hours folding animals, flowers, fancy boxes, and other objects. Origami is an engaging and cheap activity for children and even adults. All you need are square-shaped sheets of paper (which you can make using scratch paper), scissors for some projects, and instructions. There are many websites of origami projects. For the butterfly and the cherry blossom pictured in this post, I got the instructions from   origami-instructions.com, where there are countless other projects. It even allows you to upload and share pictures of your completed projects. The key to making good origami projects is to make the folds neat, crisp, and accurate. Origami is a fun way for kids to learn eye-hand coordination and geometry. A warning, though: origami is addicting. Your house will be soon cluttered with origami figures that you will hesitate to throw away!