Category Archives: make glue and mend

Harold and the Purple crayon sack upgrade.

‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ by Crockett Johnson is such a lovely story! I made the original Storysack back in 2005 but it didn’t have a game and the activity book and crayons were damaged…time for an update! I made a board game, drawing little scenes in the style of the book – then I made a fabric bedroom scenery with a little sheet sewn on so you can put Harold in bed! – I love the challenge of finding non-fiction information books to complement the stories, ‘Me on the map’ by Joan Sweeny was perfect. Introducing children to maps and geography, the little girl shows readers herself in a map of her room, her room on a map of her house, her house on the map of the street, the street on a map of the town, the town on a map of the country, the country (USA) on the map of the world (I added UK label here!) and then she explains how to use maps in diferent ways.

…recent make, glue and mends

Quite regularly I make batches of replacement game pieces – missing pieces put Storysacks out of action. Some years ago I scanned all the Storysack game pieces, so when pieces go missing I can print out a copy, glue it to cardboard and seal with more glue – making new pieces so that the games and Storysacks can continue to be used!

Occasionally I need to make replacement clothes for character pieces (because they have been lost or damaged), this week it was a new pair of pj’s for the lazy farmer in the Farmer Duck Storysack – a few weeks ago a tiny shirt for Nelligan in the Pig in the Pond Storysack. Recently most of Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs Storysack were lost, so I did some scanning (from the storybook), and drawing in Photoshop, to make ‘lollystick puppets’, then I found some great Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs activities online, improving the educational value of the sack too.