Bug Catchers

The lovely ladies at fair and funky asked me to do a half-term post for their blog with a ‘make do and mend’ themed kiddies craft.

I scratched my head for a bit. And consulted the crafting encyclopaedia that is Pinterest…

A while ago I pinned this great post, called “34 Recyclables to Upcycle for the Kids” from a fab site called Hands On As We Grow which contains all sorts of “hands on kids activities for hands on moms”! (I have no idea if I am a “hands on mom” but there are some pretty cool things on there.) The post links to other sites and the activities that they have come up with, and I saw the “Milk Jug Toss” from Creative Connections for Kids.

It involves a plastic milk bottle and a pom pom.

And then I remembered that fair and funky’s half term activity was to How to make a bug.

This is fantastic-it is basically a pom-pom, from t-shirt yarn.

So I thought that instead of a “milk jug toss” it could become a “bug catcher” which sounds way cooler…

This is what you do:

• Make your bug-refer to the most excellent instructions over on fair and funky’s blog post – we made a regular pom-pom, as I had a surfeit of wool, and no time to make t-shirt yarn. A proper t-shirt yarn bug is cooler, but either is acceptable!
• Dismember a 4 pint plastic milk bottle

by cutting the bottom off, leaving you with the bit with handle and the poury bit

• If you are feeling particularly protective of your young, then apply duct tape or similar to the sharpish edges of the milk bottle
• Allow them to decorate the “bug catcher” as they please-BigSmall stuck glittery letters on his…
• Then you have 2 3 options:

1) attach your “bug” via a piece of string/wool and then they have to try and loop the bug back up into the milk bottle to “catch” the bug

2) make 2 “catchers” and then use them to throw the bug between each other
3) hang it off a door handle to act as a cat toy (BigSmall’s idea..)

• If you are feeling especially creative, you can then decorate/embellish the cut off end of the milk bottle to make a fetching pen/random bits holder-I used wool and a hot glue gun, but PVA and an old magazine would work just as well!

This kept BigSmall entertained for longer than I had anticipated-at least 10 minutes (I have very low expectations of crafting activities for 4 year olds, yet I still persevere…)

And it kept the grown-ups entertained for hours..!