Being crafty

Magic ladder

1. Put two sheets of newspaper down on the table, side by side, and stick the two edges together with sellotape.
2. Roll the paper up, starting from one side.
3. Fasten the top and bottom of the roll with sticky tape – just at the ends.
4. Cutting through the layers, take a long piece (about 1 cm wide) out of the side of the roll all the way along, leaving just 4 cm at each end.
5. Now bend the roll back to a rainbow shape so the two ends are flat on the table.
6. Pull the insides out very carefully and ease the layers out from inside the coiled up ends - your magic ladder should appear.

Magic tree

1. Take a piece of newspaper – tabloid size is best.
2. Roll it up and seal along the edge of the roll from the end, almost to the half-way mark – this will be the trunk of the tree. (Don’t put any tape across the bottom of the roll.)
3. Take a pair of scissors and cut from the unsealed end of the roll, down to the half-way mark.
4. Keep making other parallel cuts downwards to make thin strips of paper all the way round the roll.
5. Now take a pencil and gently twist it up inside the roll from the ‘trunk’ end easing out the branches of the tree.
6. Gentle ease the branches out at the top and the bottom and you should have a magic tree or a ‘pom pom’ that American cheer-leaders use.

   Take a garden pot

   This is a create-your-own-present idea. Get the kids to decorate or paint the outside of the pot and then they can grow some seeds or buy a flowering plant to put in their new container.