Alex Toys Paper Plate Bugs

Still on the nature theme, we were lucky enough to get our hands on this fantastic kit. I believe it retails at £14.99 and is worth every penny. This provided about a week of fun for my little boy. I was amazed at the range of craft items included and the quality of them was way above average!

Here's the pics of the fun he had......................




Here's the individual bug kits laid out on the table. All very tempting, Corey couldn't wait to make them. I loved the fact that they were all individually bagged up as it meant we didn't have to spend ages searching for bits and everything remained very organised.


The first kit we tried was the bumble bee:


Here's Corey having fun cutting and sticking:


He even gets me involved.....


It was a really enjoyable activity that we could do together!
And look how pleased Corey was with his first make!!


Next we attempt the pretty butterfly. Here's the packet containing the goodies:
What I loved about this kit was that the instructions were so easy to understand that Corey had no problem following them without any help.


This is the butterfly which required gluing, taping, sticking on stickers and our next step is to scrunch up the crepe paper and stick on.

It's finished - and doesn't it look impressive.

And here's the rest of the makes:


Anyone like spiders? I like this one!


My verdict: After spending many pounds and hours of my time searching out and buying craft supplies to complete craft projects from books, this kit has to be a dream come true. It provided a variety of quality materials and called for different crafting techniques in each project so children will never get bored. My son even named all the characters and they now have pride of place in my living room. I am now officially in love with Alex Toys craft kits.

Star rating 10/10

Kit available from www.cuckoo.ltd.uk

John Adams Nature Box

The kit we have been enjoying this week is the 'John Adams Nature Box'. I think it is fantastic value, retailing at £5.40 it provided us with many hours of fun together. If I were to buy all the individual craft items separately it would have cost me so much more than £5.40. The wonderful thing about this kit is that since we have made it, we have had people come in to the house and comment how pretty it is. It really is an interesting looking feature to hold pens and pencils.

Day 1 of making the kit - Corey asked Auntie Ruth to help make the box whilst I amused Bailey. First of all Corey had to assemble the card pieces to make up the box shape. Then the base needed to be painted green. Corey then had to stick lollipop sticks all the way around the box.Is this OK Mum?

Next, the grass needs to be stuck on around the base.Then on go the flowers, some were die cuts which just needed to be pushed out and stuck on to the box with glue and others were fabric flowers which needed to be glued on.Da-da!! This is our completed piece. We pushed the butterflies out and bent them in such a way that made their wings look so very delicate and poised. We made out a sign out of paper and attached it with some pegs and string - like a little washing line. And finally we made a caterpillar, spider and ladybird out of fimo clay which needed to be baked in the oven.

How much do we rate this kit? 8/10

A really enjoyable activity that gives stunning results. In fact I think our box looked even nicer than what the cover of the kit shows. And that doesn't happen very often. Would recommend this kit to everyone with kids.

Making chocolate cornflake cakes

Ok, this activity hasn't much to do with nature - so I will go along the lines that everything that is nurtured like cocoa beans and corn is nature. Corey had fun anyway making these chocolate cornflake cakes. Sorry I'm not looking at the camera - I think I was too busy looking at the stains all over me.......

Nature Games

Another idea which we had was to try and locate any nature themed games - if any one knows of any more I would love to hear from you. The first game that Corey played was Hangman and all the words which we chose were nature themed . Corey loved this game which was a toy version of the game produced by Paul Lamond games. Little tiles were slotted in to the letter holders so that you could spell out your words. Corey enjoyed this game so much he roped his Auntie Ruth and baby brother to play with him.

Keeping a 6 year old busy

What dreary weather we have been having - it's a good job I have had lots of activities planned otherwise Corey would have been bored to tears. Although, half of the time Corey has been out to play regardless of the weather which has put some of my plan out of action. Although I planned separate themed weeks initially - we have been on nature week for the last two weeks because I had planned so many activities that took longer than what I expected. It is so fun doing educational projects like this together and I hope they are creating lots of lovely memories for Corey.

In this blog I hope to review some of the craft kits out on the market for kids.


Here's what we have been doing so far:

OK so we started off with an old favourite - something Corey and I both love - DRAWING!

So he drew lots of underwater scenes.



Well done Corey - that's a great underwater scene!