Last week-end, I did 2 crafting activities with the kids.

First, my daughter had a doll clothes hanger that she broke. That’s the cost of a very untidy room. So we decided to work on building a new one. She sat on my laps and did the measuremnt of the broken one, I used inkscape and explained to her how it worked (clearly too young to do it on her own). After 15 minutes, we had a working version, ready for customization. A few hearts, her initial letter and we’re all done, ready for laser cutting (need to happen at work this week, probably in plywood).

The other activities was crafting pompons (little balls of whool). We had some whool bought from a previous project, time to use it. Last time I did that, I was 8 years old and it took me a bit of trial to remember.

First step is to create ring of cardboard. I used an external diameter of 7cm and internal diameter of 5cm. Diameters were chosen based on the available glasses in the household (one must be pragmatic). Took 2 rings together and wrap lots of wool around it. When it’s starting to look like a torus (I used ~10m of wool, using roughly 2m each time), lock the inner hole: I used a cork or a pencil. Cut the surrounding between the  2 rings of cardboard using scissors (using snall sharp ones is preferred). When it’s cut, tie a thread between the 2 cardboard rings, remove the cork and tighten as strong as you can (this will be the only thing holding the ball together). Keep a long thread if you want to be able to attach it sto something else (e.g. a bag). Last step is to use scissor and sculpt the result to give it a nice shape. That step is more complex than it sounds.

Overall, this was a good activity for the kids, it required a bit more than one hour, they were proud of the result and it allowed to customize their school bag. Requires a lot of adult presence though for preparation, correcting the wrapping and finishing :-). Some pic or it didn’t happen: