Crafting Cherubs
I'm Catherine, a mother of three children who are now aged 10, 7 and 4. This (2016) is my fifth and final year of running a parent and toddler group. I now have a back-catalogue of nearly 100 crafts, and have spent the past two years creating this blog as a record for my toddler group for when I pass on the reins to somebody else, and to help other people who's toddler groups have a specific craft section.
I took the group on as it was about to close and it was my son's favourite group. We are in a fairly small hall so don't have much room for lots of ride-ons, so I realised that I needed to draw people to our group with the craft we provide.
The toddler group is called Cherubs hence the name of the blog.
I usually prepare approximately 30 of each craft. Painting activies are out as we don't have the space to dry them, but in the last year I discovered Paint Markers, which is quick drying paint and very popular with all ages.
The group has gradually grown in size from approximately six children when I started running the group nine weeks pregnant, to averaging thirty-five in the winter, and twenty-eight in the summer. We have become so popular that we've had to place a forty children limit for health and safety. Like my baby (now pre-schooler), the group has grown over the years. Two things definately made a difference to the size of our group - firstly, a created a website to advertise the group, which I put links to on Mumsnet and Netmums, secondly was word of mouth at the standard of craft provided, which took me a couple of years to hone my style.
Now I have a particular love of crafts involving papercups! I try to plan a each month on a theme, and come up with some of best ideas when I can't sleep.
Any links to products are purely to illustrate / to help you find the product and I am not being paid to promote them. Most of my craft material I buy from Hobbycraft for convience, but buy additional material from Baker Ross, Wilkos, Amazon and Ebay.
If you want to keep up with Crafting Cherubs, you can follow me on Pinterest.