Welcome to metomi.com, your online source of creative activities for children! We are spending some time creating wonderful things with just a pad of brightly coloured construction paper, crayons, some scissors and glue. Construction paper is an inexpensive and easy find at your neighbourhood dollar store, and extremely versatile. Buy big sheets, small sheets, and any size in between. The most wonderful things can be made from this simple list of materials! And sometimes that's all you might have handy, say on a rainy day when the kids are looking to spend some quality time with you. We've got some ideas below, but as always, embrace spontaneity and go with the flow! Happy Creating!

Here's a fun twist on the paper doll! We used a medium-sized pad (5"X7") of construction paper, but large papers will work fine also. Instead of taking a piece of paper, drawing and then cutting out a paper doll, we thought about personalizing it to the child. Have your smart children trace their bare feet on a piece of paper, then carefully cut out each foot. Do the same with the hands! Then cut out a proportionally sized head (a big circle will do!), and some rectangles for the body, arms and legs. Now attach all the body parts together: glue the hands to the arms, the feet to the legs, and so on. We made a look-alike cutout of our child that was about a foot and a half tall, and decorated it with features, clothes, etc. The more life-size the better! It was sitting in the stroller one day, and stuck onto the bedroom wall the next. The children greet it with a giggle each time they pass by. A real novelty with extended play value!

We find that youngsters love mail, writing letters, making envelopes and stuffing letters into envelopes to send and receive! What's so great about this idea is that letters - sheets of coloured or plain paper - and envelopes - folded and glued pieces of paper - are so easy to make! There are many ways to make an envelope, from folding a piece of paper almost in half and leaving an edge to seal, or something far fancier - but any method will do so long as your bright children can put a letter inside! Creating pretend stamps can be a lot of fun too, especially if you've got a fancy pair of scissors that have special blades, also an inexpensive find at the dollar store nowadays. Check out our Fun with Cardboard page for some mailbox ideas too, to form a complete playdate activity. Also, have a look at our Printables section for some ready made stationery if you need a bit of a creative boost!

Children find it exciting to imitate what grown-ups do, and being a barber is no exception! We often see the idea in various toys, whether it's Play-Doh kits or dolls with hair that can be trimmed. But keep your money in your wallet, by creating inexpensive paper versions to achieve a similar effect! Take a piece of coloured paper and roll into a cylinder; glue to hold in place. The taller your cylinder, i.e., the larger your piece of paper, the more "hair" your child will have to cut! We typically will draw some features onto the cylinder, a happy face, some arms, some clothing on half of the cylinder. The other half is dedicated to creating hair! We use our scissors to cut lines all around the cylinder, so that "hairs" are created. That leaves a long-haired person for your child the barber! You can curl the hair with a quick loop around a crayon, before snipping it off. Make a few so that your children can get a hang of it!

Hide and Seek continues to be a timeless favourite for children. We suspect the reason may be the giggly suspense of waiting in a good hiding space, or the thrill of discovery. We like to vary it up a little, because the game can quickly overwhelm children if they can't find other players soon enough, or are in their hiding spaces for too long. And depending on where you are, it may also be unsafe to hide. So our twist is to hide things, not people. Try cutting out large colourful block letters - letters in a child's name are perfect - or numbers, then hiding these items in clever hiding spots. Children then search them out, and clues like "you're getting hotter" or "you're getting colder" are provided if they need them. The children will enjoy cutting out the items, hiding them in ordinary places, and squealing with delight when they find them. We've still got some letters stuck in various parts of Grandma and Grandpa's home!

We love masks. So simple to make and children love them! Creating masks is easier if you use construction paper big enough for a child's face, but you can always improvise by taping smaller pieces together! Think masks that look like animals, fancy glasses, scary monsters, the sky's the limit! Nothing has to be drawn to perfection - children will love the experience, and not fuss that the lions mane isn't quite right. An oval with eye holes is a great start. Children can just hold them to their face and play pretend. You can always add further enhancements such as odds and ends for features, string to enable the child to wear the mask, but we find sometimes the simplest constructions are the best.