Tell Hobbycraft what activities you will be doing with your DCs during half term – x3 £100 voucher to be won! NOW CLOSED

[MichelleMumsnet]

The team at Hobbycraft would like to find out the arts and crafts activities you will be doing with your DCs this February half term holiday.

Here’s what Hobbycraft say, “As parents ourselves we know what a challenge it can be to keep the kids entertained away for the TV so for the sake of mum’s everywhere who are in need of inspiration we’d love to know what is your favourite crafting activity to do with the kids?”

The February half term is a tough one on most parents with the weather often keeping children cooped up inside. So what theme will your February half term holiday take? Will you be baking hot goodies to stave off the dreary weather? Will you re-create the outdoors inside by making an indoor den and scenery from recycling? Whatever it is, we want to hear it!

Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where three lucky Mumsnetters will win a £100 Hobbycraft gift card.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

It's dd2's birthday party next week so we're having a dry run of some of her party food (experimenting with blue jelly and blue cupcakes) and we're attempting to make a Tardis out of a box.

Dd1 has a Victorian day at school so we've also been trying out some Mrs Beeton recipes to go in her packed lunch and scouring charity shops to assemble her outfit.

Making pancakes, treasure hunts, bark rubbings and sketching!

baking cakes, crafting - my daughter loves anything that involves sticking and glitter. we have recently been finger print crafting which is a lot of fun. weather permitting we will also be off to the park

hello we will be going on a walk through delamere forest on sat i cant wait itll be nice to spend time with my two boys xx

I can't say I will be doing anything thrilling with my kids this half term but they are just resting mostly. Lazy mornings and then in the afternoons I booked them in for intensive swimming lessons which are every day. We have also been baking cakes and playing games. :)

Trampolining at local leisure centre to tire them out, and then lots of baking yummy stuff

We've done pancake making, painting and also homework books - they're not from school they're just ones I picked up from the shops. He's also made a "sorry" card because he said a naughty word (fart) in school, so I asked him to make a sorry card for his teacher.

Kids have spent a fair amount of time with the Grandparents while we work, but they have made origami dinosaurs (with much help from Gran, me thinks), and a landscape for them to live in.
Lots of cooking - cake, bread, fondant animals for top of said cake, more cake.
Found some big feathers (pheasant?) and did some writing with an inkpot and a quill.
Stickers.
Biggest success of all has been making pompoms. We went to a party a few weeks ago, and the kids entertainer said "snowball fight" and then produced about 30 white wool pompoms, and the kids had a wail of a time, so we've made snowballs.

Last half term I tried arranging days out/activities and everyday someone was whinging or moaning so this half term I took a new approach.

I Stocked the kitchen with ingredients for simple bakes, Left a box full of art and craft supplies in the dining room with copious amounts of newspaper to cover the table, made sure that the internet is connected and that access to computer/tablet is equally shared and then sat quietly in the corner in a fog of sleep deprivation nursing the baby and trying to study. My older children (aged between 4 and 14) planned and acted out their own activities and those for their younger siblings.

It is true that there have been (many) days where they all wore PJs or onesies for the entire day but this week between them all they have; made chocolate sponge cake, crispie cakes, muffins, cookies, pancakes, pizza, popcorn, paella, clay pots, clay spoon (nope? no idea) a clay longship and a clay snowman (no snow in our area), written several stories with illustrations (for me and for their younger brother age 4), started to read alone, planted apple seeds and melon seeds, created an entire continent on minecraft, played copious amounts of mindless computer games, re-enacted films/stories, sang songs, made lego models, youtubed how to play piano and learned the first part of pachabels canon/let her go/timber, the older children went swimming, all of the children (and some of their friends) had an game of nerf total warfare in the back garden, copious amounts of hide and seek, and a mess that will probably take the first week of term for me to tidy but they have enjoyed their week, I only had to interject in disputes or assist when asked and you know what....it has been the cheapest, most relaxing holiday we've had for a while. The only things that I really should have thought to acquire beforehand were earplugs or noise cancelling headphones! I swear I am never planning anything ever again!

Iv been teaching my 11 and 7 year olds how to sew. We have been doing cross stitch, sewing napkins and pillow cases on the sewing machine, and making pompoms. Also it was pancake day so it was a great excuse to get out the whisk and show the little dudes how to make my perfect pancakes

We are definitely heading to Chester zoo

Cross-stitching is our favourite craft!

I encouraged my child to do her homework and do a little extra in preparation for her KS2 SATS in 2 months' time. As a treat, I took her to the newly local burger restaurant. She also spend 2 days in Worthing with a friend and a day at her best friend's house.

I have to admit I have little patience for doing craft activities with my 4 year-old and she has equally little patience for doing them too!
She does lots of craft with childminder and at nursery so I usually try to do some cooking with her.

Today we've played with play-do a bit and made some cupcakes. Tomorrow we will ice the cupcakes as it's gotten a bit late tonight.
I'm going to try and find some activities online to back up the teaching at nursery so we have stuff to hand for those gaps between playing.

we do a bit of everything, if the weather is nice we tend to go to the park & explore, or at home we rifle through the recycling & find tubes, egg cartons etc to do crafting with, altho my lot make a lovely mess, there's normally glitter & pipe cleaners everywhere!

we made home made cards for family members and took them round when we visited them

We made pancakes, some cards and DS2 has been making lego stop motion videos

We have been making playdough, baking and drawing

we've done some baking - chocolate cornflake buns and oatie cookies

played with kinetic sand

read thomas the tank magazines

watched cbeebies and films

played games

visited nan

had cuddles and a lot of afternoon naps

Lots of outdoor fun- national trust and English heritage properties and grounds. We'll go even if the weather is awful - just wear more clothes!
DS is currently obsessed with superheroes and we'll spend a lot of time quizzing each other on various character attributes plus he likes to use his million and one notebooks to write about and draw existing and new characters! We may do some baking too- I'll invariably end up doing the washing up!

Last day of half term today, Ds(5) is building lego stuff and wants to help me type a story he wrote (dictated it as he isn't keen on extended writing!) and do some baking. We have done cinema, swimming and kids theatre trips, he went to a craft day with a friend one day; a couple of school friends had birthday parties; he had a play date and put on a lolly stick puppet show with a friend. Also caught up on school work. Younger DS is 14 months so has mainly been playing with saucepans and getting into places he shouldn't.

I'll be taking the older ones to the local funfair and baking with the younger one.

Visting farms & petting zoo's to learn about animals.

We have made biscuits and decorated them, we tried out some origami and have been making loombands and bracelets.

This half term we have baked fairy cakes, decorated shortbread stars, made potato painting pictures, made Easter chicks out of a paper plate and filled with little choccie eggs(trial ran these on my dc's to see how they would work out as a craft session for a toddler group I run!) and collected sticks/leaves etc at our local park to come home and make pictures with.....busy busy busy :) Love being creative during the holidays!!