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

A little bit of a cheat! But we use pre-made papier-mâché animals and use gum paper ripped up to create patchwork animals - it's not that messy and it entertains him for hours. It has to be followed by an Elmer book though!

Baking always goes down well

Children love sticking glue crayons etc get a huge bucket ready coloured and say anything goes

For a clean, contained craft, put your small person inside a big cardboard box. Give them crayons, markers etc and they can decorate the inside to their hearts content

See if you have a local recycling Scrap Store for all sorts of Interesting, usually cheap "junk"

Get a small box and put a piece of paper in. Then put pain on a marble and roll the marble around in the box. The result looks great.

Purchase a roll of lining paper & draw around littlies then cut it out, paint or crayon it, sticking on wool for hair. It can be a model of child, or turn it into a fireman, policeman etc. Hang finished image on bedroom wall.

paint, a large piece of paper and let them do loads of footprints and handprints, loads of fun!

we go on nature trails and collect leaves and grasses and then we stick them in a scrapbook. also good fun is cutting out pics from an old catalogue and making collages.

Getting some great craft ideas from this thread - thanks Mumsnetters! :)
We love a cardboard box in our house & have spent many an hour cutting out doors & windows & then going crazy with the paint when decorating it in the garden! Great fun to jazz it up with sequins, pompoms, foil & sweetwrappers!
Fab idea for a party game - make teams & then give each a cardboard box & the brief: to design a house - the most imaginative & unique house wins!
Other fun & cheap craft ideas are potato printing, collage art & anything to do with pipe cleaners! Great to make spiders, snakes, etc.
One craft I'm looking forward to doing with my son is making figures & vehicles jointed with paperfasteners. I loved these when I was younger & would love to share this with my son as I think he'd find this fascinating - particularly a car or a train with moving wheels!
Have fun crafting everyone :)

I recently saw a really cool idea which required nothing more than some coloured acetate and water. Cut the acetate into random shapes and then wet some clear plastic and make stain glass, for my older daughter I could show her what colours mixing primary colours made. For messier craft I tend to reserve this for after dinner so they can go straight in the bath!

We like going on nature walks and sticking what we find to a piece of paper (keep it simple!)

Make jolly crowns from silver card and cut out bits of foam etc for jewels. Play dress up kings and queens afterwards.

If I'm feeling brave I let them do some finger paintings!

Draw around their hands several times, cut the hand shapes out and arrange to form a wreath. Decorate.

Stick dry pasta to paper to make pasta pictures.

im a big fan of paper masha its so easy to make with newspapers and glue water l always use balloons as a base to make peaple or items just burst when done and walla a dish mr blobby allsorts monsters its just great fun

We have a box full of glue and glitter and pipe cleaners etc

Inspired by a discussion about how some children in other parts of the world, or in the past had so few toys that they used whatever they could find, "SockTeddy" as created. It's one of their favourite rainy day activities with Granny now!

Have a box to keep random buttons, bits of packaging, anything you come across that can be used for collage. Dd loves digging in to find stuff to glue on her pictures/ models.

Ooh we looooove Elmer. When Dt's were learning their earliest sounds we did lots of e for Elmer! One craft I did had an outline of Elmer and the children had lots of coloured tissue squares to stick all over it! It's still on the wall now!

My kids love craft... I'm always scouring Pinterest for new ideas

We make all sorts out of 'junk' empty boxes, yogurt pots etc!

One of the favourite crafts my children enjoy is making handprint art - the possibilities are endless...monkeys, Rudolph the red nose reindeer, flowers.

Another messy play favourite is to get some plastic toys (dinosaurs for example) and dip their feet into paint and stamp them into the paper to make dinosaur footprints. Cars and lorries also work well for this.

The CBeebies magazines are great! Not just the art one but all of them have craft stuff in. I am not remotely arty, in fact I got banned from art lessons but even I can help my son do one of the CBeebies projects

Other thing I like doing is sticking a giant cardboard box in the garden and we get all the paints out and bits to stick to it and make a spaceship/boat/ whatever...
None of us have any arty genes whatsoever but we have a lot of fun!

I like cutting out all sorts of different pics out of magazines and letting my neice choose what ones she wants to stick into a collage. Great fun.

Cut up old cardboard avocado cartons and paint to make pet mice or hedgehogs . Easy and realistic!

depend how old your children are bookfolding for a little bit older children, get a old book, and take covers off, then fold the first page like you would fold a areoplane then take the bottom corner and fold over again do that all through the book and when u finished hey presto a hedgehog

In my experience anything messy goes down well, especially with the very little ones. Finger painting, or rolling things in glitter. We also like to collect items from nature walks, like pebbles or leaves, and use them to make pictures.

My DD loves to personalise her things with stickers and we also use them to "sign" cards from her... Usually with a big pile of stickers all placed in on top of each other in exactly the same spot.