Leo’s First Craft Session

23 Jan

*‘One Snowy Night’ by Nick Butterworth, with the character cutouts from The Mama Project*

The Percy the Park Keeper books by Nick Butterworth were some of my absolute favourites growing up, so when Leo receives ‘One Snowy Night’ for his first Christmas, I’m so excited to read it with him. Granted, he’s a little young to understand it yet, but he still seems to love looking at the pictures and gets a good giggle listening to the different character voices as we read together.

Then I discover this book is The Mama Project’s ‘book of the month’ and there are free character print-outs to go with it.

All you need is:
The printout (downloadable from here)
Cardboard tubes
PVA glue, pritt-stick or sellotape.
Glue sticks (not essential but handy)
Scissors (keep out of reach of your little one of course)

*Leo had fun rolling the cardboard tubes about*

Simply cut each character out, curve the paper around the cardboard tube and stick down. Then cut out the tails and stick those onto the back, and voila! I imagine this is a great activity with toddlers and kids old enough to cut out and put together the animals themselves, but I also had loads of fun doing this with Leo. It’s free, easy, and doesn’t take too long, and the best part is it really brings story time to life. I’ll be keeping these characters handy for when we read the story together next winter too.

*Leo enjoys playing with the characters as we read the book*

This is the first craft I’ve done with Leo and at 5 1/2 months he obviously can’t use the scissors or glue but he has great fun rolling the cardboard tubes around and listening to me talk through what we’re making. In the afternoon we set up story time and Leo clutches each character (and has a good chew on most of them) while we read.

Crumpet (🐈 ) also hovers around for the story, although something tells me he’s just waiting for his chance to knock the animals over afterwards 😂