There are a lot of different crowns in our house, but according to Morgan, none of them are ‘Kingly enough’.

Our original printable tiara template was not right. Apparently a King’s crown needs a spot for a really big jewel at the top, and it’s more pointy.

Armed with these instructions I set to work creating a new printable crown template.

And then Morgan set to work painting it.

I love our recycled marker paints and some cotton buds for a quick and easy painting activity like this!

Apparently this is what a real king looks like…

You can download our free printable crown template here.

The beauty of these crowns is that you don’t need to find a piece of card or paper long enough to go around a head! Simply open the pdf file and print the crowns straight onto an A4 (letter sized) piece of card or paper. Decorate your crowns, cut around them and punch a hole at each side. Attach some string or elastic sized to fit your head and you’re done.

And apparently this is what a real king looks like…

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Make A Crown! – Free Printable Crown Template is a post from: picklebums.com

In case you haven’t noticed, I really like imaginative play.
Lucky for me, so do my kids!

Kids learn so much from imaginative play.

It is an holistic type of play, covering all areas of develop and allowing the child to focus on and learn whatever he or she is most interested in or ready for at that moment. Learning is not isolated to one narrow, adult directed area as children practice and learn to integrate a wide variety of skills including; sharing, problem solving, maths and literacy skills, innovation, language, negotiation, concentration, working together, fine and gross motor skills and much more. Imaginative play is also a fabulous way for children to manage stress, to cope with difficult situations and to make sense of their world.

I wrote a whole article about why imaginative play is good for kids, but what I didn’t write about is that imaginative play is good good for parents too!

One of the best things about imaginative play is that one set up can be played with in lots of different ways so children of different ages, at different stages of development and with different interests can all play.

Right now my eight year old girls, my four year old boy, and occasionally even my 21 month old are all playing with the same imaginative play set up.

For the girls, part of the joy was collecting the items and setting the scene. They like making ‘pretty displays’ so heading out to the garden with a basket and some scissors to collect leaves and flowers and arranging them around the scene was lots of fun.

Today’s set up is an ‘Elven party’. It includes fairies, elves, a bear, and a few warriors. Something for everyone!

Because imaginative play is open-ended, meaning there is lots of ways to play, it is easier for everyone to accommodate others’ ideas. It makes sharing and playing together much easier.

It also means there is less frustration for Morgan who going through a patch where he feels he can’t ‘do anything right’. Because there is no right or wrong way to play he feels confident and empowered.

Noey comes and goes from the play. He climbs up onto a chair and rearranges a few things, steals a rock or a mushroom or deposits something new to play with. The big kids tolerate him ‘wrecking’ things because they can easily write him into the story. He is a tornado that rips through the party, or a monster, or a wizard…

There are not many activities that all four kids can do together with barely any supervision or interaction from me.

And they’ve been playing for over two hours… that’s why I love imaginative play!

Disclaimer : After two and a half hours playing with the Elven Party, it did end in lots of tears from the four year old perfectionist, and it took a lot of control to keep my yell in. I still like imaginative play, but I’m just ‘keeping it real’ in case you all think that my kids are some kind of angels, or I have some kind of magic ability to set up activities that make my kids play happily together for hours.

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Imaginative Play – Why it’s Great for Parents! is a post from: picklebums.com

“Can I paint Mum?”

I almost said an automatic ‘no’ when he asked, but something made me stop and think first.

It was already 2pm, and Noey was running around getting in to everything, and I had a blog post to write, and it was ballet night, and…

So many reasons to say not now, to say ‘maybe tomorrow’… except I knew it wouldn’t happen tomorrow, and probably not the day after either. Then in the back of my mind I remembered I’d saved some empty deodorant roll-ons a long time ago.

“Hang on a sec… if I can find the things I’m thinking of them you can do really awesome special kind of painting!”

I was sure I had hidden away three empty roll-ons but time pressure kept me from digging any deeper in to the boxes of ‘craft stuff’ so we went with two. We chose paint colours, and then using a butter knife I carefully popped the ‘ball’ out of both containers.

I gave them a quick rinse then poured in the paint, and added a good amount of detergent (it helps the ball roll better and makes cleaning up lots easier). We popped the balls back in, put the lid on tight and gave them a good shake.

Then we got a little fancy and made some labels so we’d know what colour was in each container.

Then he painted….

And now we have a quick, easy, and mostly mess free painting option for the next time he asks to paint!

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Easy Art for Kids – Roll-on Painting. is a post from: picklebums.com

We’ve done dropper painting before, a long time ago when the girls were little. Back then we used droppers saved from medicine bottles, but these days all our medication seems to come with a spoon not a dropper, so I splurged a few dollars on a set of plastic pipettes when we were at Riot Art and Craft the other day. I knew dropper painting was going to be a big hit will all three big kids.

What You Need

Eye droppers or pipettes – one for each colour.
Food dye, very watered down paint, or we used our marker paints.
A container for each colour of paint/dye.
Paper serviettes/napkins or coffee filter paper.
Something to put under your paper to catch the drips!

What to Do

The joy of this activity is that it is easy. There is no right or wrong way to do it, and it’s all about the process.

After showing my kids how the pipettes worked I left them to explore and experiment.

Watching how the paint is ‘sucked up’ by the paper and spread in circles.

Discovering little rivers of colour running down your page.

Experimenting with how the colours mix and combine.

Of course we ran out of paint and space to dry our master pieces before we ran out of interest and enthusiasm!

For more information about why process oriented art is important for kids check out Childhood101′s ebook Art Not Craft – affilliate link.

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Easy Art For Kids – Dropper Painting is a post from: picklebums.com

A little forward thinking and some treasures frozen into blocks of ice makes a run of super hot days a LOT more bearable.

What do you do to beat the heat?

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Sensory Play – Icy Fun! is a post from: picklebums.com

I remember the day we visited the girls’ kinder for the first time, just to see what it was like. They had a shop set up in the home corner area and immediately my just turned four year old girls made a beeline for it and stayed playing shop for the whole time we were there.

Now, four years later, nothing has changed. When someone says the magical words ‘let’s play shop’ eyes still light up and little faces still beam… there is just more of them now! And these days ‘playing shop’ is more involved then a just a basket and a few empty boxes!

These days we need to make our own money, and share it out equally between all the shoppers.

We need to make a sign, and don’t forget to add the shop’s web address too.

Then you have to arrange all the goods, find some bags, baskets and trolleys and distract your baby brother somehow… then… then you are ready to play shop!

Do you kids like to play shop?
What other dramatic play themes do they enjoy?

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Playing Shop. is a post from: picklebums.com

“I want to sick something! Mum can I glue something? You know, stick stuff? You know, like with glue?”

It makes me smile the way he talks. From a 2 year old who didn’t even say ‘Mama’ to a four year old who who talks like a geeky teenager.

How can I say no to a request like that?

So I dig out the pot of home-made paste and find some cardboard (we save cereal boxes to cut up and paste on) and then search the recesses of my frazzled brain for things he could paste with. I really need to write a list of good collage materials I tell myself as I cut up some origami paper (it’s all I could find) and start making a collection.

So here it is… a list of things to stick…. you know… like with glue.

Easy to find, Easy to Glue, Collage Materials.

Recycled Wrapping Paper
Recycled Christmas/Birthday Cards
Paper Streamers
Junk Mail
Recycled printed papers
Old Magazines
Feathers
Cotton Balls
Patty Pans (cup cake wrappers)
Flowers
Leaves
Grass
Sticks
Cellophane
Tissue Paper
Confetti
Fabric Scraps
Wool/String
Ribbons
Foil
Sequins
Packing Peanuts
Bubble Wrap
Match sticks/Tooth Picks
Icy Pole Sticks
Paper Doilies

I am sure there are lots more things to add to this list. What have I forgotten? What’s your favourite collage material?

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Easy Art for Kids – Easy to find, Easy to Glue, Collage Materials is a post from: picklebums.com

My girls don’t like Santa. They never have, and I’m beginning to think they never will.

These days, at a very grown up eight years of age, they can keep themselves together when they walk past a giant blow up Santa in a shop, but no amount of lollies can bribe them to get any where near a real live Santa. Not even some very rude and mean spirited people telling them that if they don’t like Santa they won’t get any presents has made them change their mind. They just don’t like the jolly old over dressed man, not one bit.

To get around the whole lack of presents idea the two of them decided that they were ok with Santa landing his sleigh in the paddock. He can touch down far, far, from our house, over near the windmill, and then send his Angels into the house to deliver the loot. Yep… bet you didn’t know that as well as all those reindeer, Santa also travels with two Christmas angels.

So it is the Christmas Angels that deliver gifts to our house, and it is The Angels who receive copious amounts of mail at around this time of the year.

Santa does get a little letter love…

Morgan decided he LOVED Santa as a two year old and proclaimed it loudly, much to his sisters’ disgust, but when it came time to actually say hello to him and get the expected lolly, the love wasn’t so forth-coming. But Morgan happily sat down to write a letter to Santa last night, even making a really good attempt at writing ‘Santa’ too.

If you’d like to write some Christmas letters, to Santa, the Angels or maybe just to friends and family, I have made a Christmas version of my kids letter writing set (You can find writing set 1 here and writing set 2 here.).

This set comes with three different writing papers. Each writing paper design comes in a lined and un-lined version, for those who’d are not quite ready to write yet (as requested by a reader) and each has a matching evelope template, just cut, fold and stick.

You can download the Christmas Letter Writing set in a zipped folder here, via 4shared (no password problems this time… I hope!)

There will be a new Christmas themed printable each Monday until Christmas, and a few random extras thrown in too! Follow me via facebook, or subscribe via rss to make sure you don’t miss out and be sure to check out last week’s Christmas Printable – Christmas Postcard Template – just add your own photos and you are ready to print!

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2011 Christmas Printable Series – Christmas Letter Writing Set. is a post from: picklebums.com

We usually use a glue stick for collage as they are quick and easy to get out and pack up, don’t need a brush and easy for small hands to manage. But for some collage materials you need something with a bit more sticking power, that’s when we make corn flour paste.

Corn Flour Paste Recipe

1 part corn flour – 1/3 cup
3 parts water – 1 hot cup

In a saucepan, mix the cornflour with a little cold water to form a paste. Then add the hot water (the hotter it is the less time it will take to ‘cook’ the paste) a little at a time, stirring vigorously to get rid of any lumps. Once all the water is added cook the paste, stirring continuously, over a medium heat until it thickens and becomes opaque.

This paste is thick and gloopy so it doesn’t drip off brushes or run down pages. If you require even more sticking power, add some pva glue to the mix.

The above amounts make up enough paste for four kids to paste and paste until the collage materials run out. Add a few drops of tea tree oil and left overs will keep in the fridge for ages.

This paste also makes excellent finger paint. Increase the quantities to 1 cup of corn flour and 3 cups of water and add food colouring or paint after you have cooked the paste.

We are enjoying lots of gluey activities around here at the moment. I will posting some more collage ideas and activities soon, but check out some of the gluey activities we’ve done in the past…

From left to right : Autumn Leaf Collage, Simple Paper Mosaics, Paper Covered Lanterns, Personal Letterboxes.

Linking up with the Play Academy at NurtureStore this week.

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Easy Art for Kids – Corn Flour Paste Recipe is a post from: picklebums.com

I know that my kids have been itching to play in this huge puddle since it stopped raining earlier this week.

I know that getting dirty is lots of fun.

I know that we don’t need a swimming pool

I know that if her career as a zoo keeper doesn’t work out, she could always take up mud wrestling.

I know that rolling up his pants was a total waste of time!

I know that an hour spent playing in a huge muddy puddle was the perfect end to the first week back at school.

What do you know? Link up with Yay For Home’s Things I Know

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Things I Know… is a post from: picklebums.com