Aupair advice: Crafts to make with children

When working as an aupair, you spend many hours with the children you are caring for. It is very easy to turn on the TV, have them watch it and stop worrying, but...
one: you weren't hired to have the kids watching TV while you spend hours with your cellphone.
and two: the kids will soon get bored and they will become harder to handle. 

Because of this, in the summer or whenever the weather is good, take the kids to a park, take a walk with them, go to the swimming pool or do any kind of outside activities you all enjoy. But... what if the weather is bad? Very often, specially during the winter, you will have to keep them home, so in order to keep them entertained, what better than doing some crafts with them? So here I am collecting a list of crafts you can do with things that can easily be found in the house.


Homemade clay (plasticine):

You will need:

• A cup of water.
• A spoonfull of oil.
• Three cups of flour.
• Food coloring. 

How to do it:

Mix together all the ingredientes except the flour and mix it all until you get an homogeneous mixture; make sure to add enough food coloring to have a bright colored micture once you add the flour. Slowly add the flour and mix it all; keep mixing until you get a mixture as thick as cookie dough. Mix until the color has spread to all the mixture, and you are done! Now the kids can play with it, and even if the little ones put it in their mouth they are safe, because this mixture is not toxic!

Stamps with potatoes:

This craft is very simple and the kids will have fun both making them and playing with them after they have been done. 

In order to make stamps with potatoes you will only need three things: potatoes, knifes (plastic knifes if you are going to let the kids use them) and liquid paint. First, cut the potatoes in half horizontally and once you have half a potatoe incise the shape you want on them. Once you have made all the shapes you wanted to do, paint the potatoes and use them as stamps! The kids will love it! 

Picture frames:

You will need:

• Cardboard.
• Paint (markers, liquid paint and others)
• Glue.
• Scissors. 
• A picture.

How to do it:

First cut the cardboard in the shape you want the picture frame to have; remember to make both the front and the back part. Now, together with the children decorate the cardboard, you can decorate it by painting it, by sadding stickers... feel free to use your imagination! Lastly paste the picture to the back part and then glue the front part too. Now all you need to do is find a spot where you can put the picture in the new homemade frame. 

Anti-stress balls.

These balls are great both to play with them and even to simply hold them and you only need 3 ingredients to make them: rice, balloons and a funnel.

First choose a balloon, fill it with rice (untill it is as big as an egg) by using the funnel and tie it with a small knot. Now take another balloon and cut the narrow part of it; then, cover the fist baloon with this second one. If you want to make the ball harder to break so that you don't run into a room full of rice on the floor (or even worse, have the parents come home and find their kids' room unexplainably covered in rice). 

This craft only takes two minutes and the kids will love to play with things that they created themselves. 

Colorfull sugar.

This craft is also very simple and the kids love it. I did it in class when I was 7 and I remember that my classmates and I loved it. The result of it is very nice and the kids can make it as a gift for their parents, they will feel incredibly proud of it!

You will need:

• Sugar.
• Chalk in different colors.
• A seethrough pot (plastic or glass) that has a lid. transparente.

How to do it:

Take some sugar (a handfull for instance), color it very well with chalk and put it appart from the rest of the sugar. Now do the same with as many colors as you want always making sure that the colros don't get mixed. Once you have colored all the sugar take it in parts and put it in the pot carefully so that the colors don't get mixed (if they do you will have a pot full of brownish sugar). Fill it in completely, and lastly close the lid very strongly. You will love the result!