With all this talk of snow, it's been making me feel a little Christmassy again. It seemed as if the white stuff was enveloping the rest of the country this past week but although we had some right at the start of the working week, it soon melted away. Not wanting to be left out, Sophia and I sat down together and decided to make our own 'snow' - paper snowflakes!It's something that's really easy to do and something you can do with children of any age. Yes, it does involve scissors, but you can involve younger children in different ways.
Sophia is only three-years-old and she had a great time helping me make these snowflakes. Here's what we did.
We collected together some A4 sized sheets of paper (although you can use paper of any size) and Sophia began to colour them in, drawing anything she wanted onto the paper and using any colours she liked. She used felt-tip pens to colour in her paper, but if you're nervous about letting your child loose with these, crayons will work just as well.
Once she had finished, I folded the paper into quarters and began to cut shapes out of the paper along the folded edges (under the direction of Sophia of course!). When you fold your paper, you can do this as many times as you like, just make sure that once you've folded it into quarters to then fold it diagonally using the centre point of the paper is the 'pivot point' for your folds. You can do whatever you like when you cut the paper; snip out shapes along the folded edges of your paper, making them as intricate as you dare, and also cut around - or into - the outer edge of the paper to give your 'snowflake' a more rounded or 'snowflake-y' look.
Sophia and I made a few snowflakes together and had a great time. We stuck them up onto the wall with blu-tack, but here's an idea for you - why not thread some string or cotton through a top hole on your snowflakes and hang them from your door handles, wardrobe handles, coat hooks, or even two intertwined (and decorated, perhaps with some tinsel) coat hangers to make a basic mobile?
And our crafty snowflake-making seems to have done the trick. It started snowing this morning...
