Cheap fun for crafty kids
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I love kid things. I regularly read children’s picture books from the library (and consequently, Amazon recommends them to me all the time and I find great new books). I like coloring books. And I have a blast with assembling paper crafts. I don’t actually have kids, though, so all of this wonderfulness doesn’t really save me any money except that it occupies me for a few moments. However, if you have kids, presumably they want entertainment from time to time and you occasionally would like the TV to be off. It’s your lucky day if your kids like crafty things!
These first two require a printer (but if you don’t have one, your local library may provide one for free or cheap—mine charges $.10/page + tax—and the library trip in itself will probably be entertaining).
The Toymaker has some beautifully illustrated color paper toys to print and construct. My sister and I have made several of them and the boxes are particularly cool, though the kids will probably be more interested in the more “playable” toys. We had to do some fudging on the Chocolate Truck, but it just required a little more creativity.
Barnacle Press provides an awesome grabbag of vintage “papercraft” pages. They are all black and white, which makes them excellent for coloring, and also cheaper for printing. These are the kind of crafts where you pin the pieces together and then they are moving puppets. [link via Cory]
I just got a book from the library called Kids Knitting [affiliate link] which has fantastic reviews on Amazon and looks great. Kids can teach themselves to knit with this book, and it might be fun to learn with them, too. I’m going to follow this book’s instructions and make my own knitting needles pretty soon!