Share your craft ideas for young kids to win £100 worth of Elmer books and goodies!

[UrsulaMumsnet]

Explore the touch-and-feel world of Elmer and his colourful friends in this bright, fun first concepts playbook. Perfect for parents and babies to enjoy together, this book is jam-packed with stimulating colours and touch-and-feel areas to really engage little ones. Elmer's Touch and Feel World is a great introduction to learning through play and, of course, to everyone's favourite patchwork elephant.

Join in the celebrations on Saturday 28th May and attend one of over 1000 Elmer Day events happening at bookshops and libraries across the country! For more information visit the website

Elmer's Touch and Feel World publishes in May priced £8.99

Share your craft ideas for young kids to be in with a chance of winning a selection of fabulous Elmer books and goodies worth £100, including Elmer plush toy, lunchbox, tabard, tote bag, sound book and more!

Elmer the patchwork elephant is a popular picture book character created by David McKee. Andersen Press has published 23 original Elmer picture books since the first Elmer story in 1989, as part of a character brand publishing programme that now includes a range of novelty and board books. Elmer’s iconic look and playful character have made him a firm international favourite in millions of households

This discussion is sponsored by Andersen Press and will end 20 May

Spin painting! Put a piece of paper in a salad spinner, add paint and spin....who needs Damien Hirst!

Keep it simple for young kids and be prepared- get everything ready before calling them through to start. Favourites here are stickers, foam cut outs, glitter glue pens, and paint pens. Pound land and home Bargains are great for picking up cheap sequins etc. We always have a stash of plain cards and envelopes for making last minute birthday and thank you cards.

We like collecting rocks, then painting them, and glueing eyes on as well. I put a plastic sheet down in the garden, bring out a bucket of suds water for vlean up, then we just generally make a mess.

The coloured cellophane wrappers from sweets/chocolates such as Quality Street make great 'stained glass windows' - flatten them out glue to the back of a piece of card with a shapes cut out and hang where the light will catch it. Obviously you will need to eat a variety of chocolates first, you know, to get a full range of colours...

Old kitchen roll tubes can be used for ANYTHING no matter what time of year. You can make rain shakers by adding rice, snowmen in the winter, add stickers to them. They are an all round craft idea. Can paint them or use to be pirates

My DDs love making animals out of paper plates and cardboard tubes.
They love cutting and sticking absolutely anything.
Painting is great fun - with brushes, fingers/hands or with potato/apples cut-outs.

Make up picnics by keeping stash of junk mail (or organic food box leaflets!) then cut out food and drink pictures and stick into paper circles or paper plates. Keeps them quiet for ages!

We like placing the teddies on paper and drawing round them then trying to copy what they look like with material, feltpens, glitter, foil etc lol its great fun

Dd loves mud pies. She collects the mud, mixes in water and makes everything filthy. She then attempts to feed me the pie. Mmm...

A nice variation on painting - bubble pictures. Put blobs of different coloured paint in a dish of water and swirl around along with a squeeze of washing up liquid. Put a straw in and blow bubbles, then gently place a piece of card or paper over the bubbles and turn the paper the over. Voilà beautiful bubbles

For us, it's cardboard boxes and felt pens - we have created pirate ships, rockets, football pitches and everything in between. Fuels the kids' imaginations and great fun too!

We make our own play doh and add glitter - looks fab and is much tidier than using glitter with glue!

Book making! The sheer pleasure making their own little book ( a couple of pieces of paper or card even better) folded to make a book, pick a favourite theme and let them create a little story then illustrate with pictures. I used to laminate these then and they're great! Also good for their own bedtime story😃

Toilet rolls and a Pringles tube to make a rocket, with crepe paper for flames!

My girls love anything messy and making any crafty.i always Make sure we have everything ready before we start this includes a bowl of water for hands when we are painting.we made our own Christmas cards using my daughters thumb to do tree and she did the presents and star with paint brush she loved doing it and the family who got them loved them too.

get a big roll of paper and lay it out either on playing field or lawn then foot paint all across it!!they love it.

I buy rolls of cheap wallpaper from charity shops- then roll the length out with the plain back side facing upwards... I then roll the entire roll as far along on the ground of my garden path...

I do this when we have lots of children round in the summer, or even just for my kids to keep them entertained...
I then lay out paints, pens, glitter, glue, collage- anything I can find in the craft cupboard and let them run riot creating a communal art piece!!!

They all love it... Sometimes I give them a theme i.e- dinosaurs/space/nature.... I love watching them work together, or independently in their own little areas! It's cheap too!!

My two year old loves getting a roll of old wallpaper and using it to scribble/ paint on. His favourite craft day ever was when we put the roll of paper in the garden painted our feet and ran over it.

Making Elmers out of plastic milk cartons! (The handle makes a fab trunk). We've made these out of 1 pint ones and bigger. Then just collect a variety of different colours and textures of paper into different shapes sand glue them on. We even used coloured cellophane (sweet wrappers) and made lanterns - just insert a battery operated candle! These look fab at Christmas. :)

Soo many... painting large stones & then making a display of them in the garden, making our own play doh, tissue paper flowers is another one. We love crafts in this house!

Marble art is great fun. Put some paper in a tray. Put some paint and marbles in a bowl and mix. Then put the marbles in the tray and roll around.

I'm not crafty by nature, but have been known to go out collecting leaves in autumn to make a big tree collage. Kits go down well here - not the cheapest way to do things, but bought when they're in the sale things like a paint your own tea set have provided hours of fun both with the painting and the playing.

We're constantly doing something, painting, colouring, making rockets, fancy artsy pictures, whatever we can think of. Mostly we just get some art equipment on to the table and kids can decide what they want to do, this way it also feeds their imagination as they get to choose x

Try polymorph and coolmorph...really lovely milk based modifiable clay that c25k be endlessly reformed and coloured with food dye.

We have 2 favs. 1. Tattie stamps: cut a potato in half and carve a shape on each side - dip in paint and have fun stamping them on paper. 2. Nature picture: (this one ties in outdoor time too!) Gather lots of flowers and leaves. Lay them out on kitchen roll and press them between heavy books till they're dry. Make a collage with them and add glitter to make it sparkle.