The long summer holidays are here, but how do you amuse the kids without spending a fortune? iVillagers come up with things they made earlier

Boxes galore

How about making a house using a cereal packet? I used those small individual portion boxes and covered them with lining paper. On a separate sheet of paper, I drew the windows, doors and roof (I even added flowers and a dog) and let the children colour them in. The kids cut them out and glued them on. Of course, they don't necessarily get stuck in the right places, but there you go. We made a whole village so the children could drive their cars around and about.

I remember when I was a kid, mum and dad couldn't afford to buy me a doll’s house – so mum made me a three-storey house from biggish boxes. She lined each room with paper and sample carpet tiles. I was as happy as Larry with it for years.

Big boxes, used for appliances or stereo equipment, can be cut and painted to make Wendy houses. The whole day is frittered away decorating and then playing in the house – and the good news is, you can flatten it out for storage.

Our favourite creation is a post box. The children write letters, draw pictures and spend hours posting everything they can lay their hands on.

We made a house using a fridge freezer box, but the children discovered a new use for it when our five-year-old climbed on the roof and it collapsed – it made a wonderful slide.

Story pictures

How about getting the kids to create a collage telling the story of the three little pigs? All you need are a few pieces of straw – if you don't keep rabbits then drinking straws will do. Draw a basic square for the house and a normal triangular roof. Add some windows and a door, and the kids can paste straw to the walls with glue.

Use bits of stick to make a mosaic for the roof. You could even make the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. Cut them out, stick them to straws and, hey presto, the children can act out the story.

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.

   If you’re thinking ahead to Christmas presents (heaven forbid), the following bulbs will flower indoors in the winter months: hyacinth, daffodil, narcissi, winter aconite, snowdrop, crocus, small iris. Don’t start planting until September though.

   Messy business

   I love letting the kids get all glued up with papier mâché. You can make all sort of things – try faces for instance. Use a balloon (blown up to an appropriate size) and get the children to cover it with little bits of newspaper soaked in a bowl of wallpaper paste. It takes a while to do because they need to make a complete layer, let it dry, then add another. Keep repeating the process until they’ve built up a firm round shape. Dry it off in the airing cupboard and then the children can paint the faces on and make hair using bits of wool. If you pop the balloon inside the head, you can add a fabric body to make a glove puppet.

   For a school project, we made papier mâché balls of varying sizes and hung them on a wire coat hanger, making our very own solar system. Looked pretty good, too.

   And finally…

   You can make masks using paper plates with holes cut out for eyes, nose and mouth. The kids can decorate or colour the mask, and then attach a lolly stick at the back to hold it up to their faces. You can also make finger puppets out of felt, and build a theatre out of a shoebox – the kids can make up a play for their puppets to perform to you.

   If you have more ideas for whiling away the holiday hours with the children, post a message on our Crafts for Kids message boardand tell us about them. Take a look at some of the LIVE discussions taking place right now on the board: