Activity packs for children

are on my mind. I need to put some together. The age range now extends from three (going on four) to eleven (going on twelve). 

These are for the children in the street and my great nieces and nephew. My brother can take those back to them when he (hopefully) is allowed to enter the state at the end of the month. 

The youngest is easy to do. I have had some experience with things like paper, cardboard, glue sticks, stickers, envelopes and more. Little L... can have that sort of thing now. Her brother is more of a problem. He's a very active outside sort of child who isn't fond of school or anything on the printed page. I might provide paper, stickers and something he can make. 

I can still provide paper, cardboard, stickers, felt tipped pens and the like for some of them but the oldest needs much more of a challenge and so does the next in line. It was for that reason I was delighted to find some immensely complex dot-to-dot books in the local bookshop. They were on the "remainder" table and I put my paw out, looked at them and decided they would be "just the thing". It will take them a while to do them. 

I mentioned all this to one of the mothers when we were talking yesterday. Her usual reaction of "you don't have to give them anything" was immediately modified by"but they loved the last lot and it kept them out of my hair for so long". Well, yes. That's the whole idea. I hope I can still "think young enough" to know how much I would have liked something like that when I was young. We didn't have "stickers" - we had "transfers" instead - and there were no felt tip pens. What I do remember though is my paternal grandmother giving all of us small packets of pencils- with a sharpener, a colouring book, and a paper pad to draw on with our crayons. It was just the right thing for when it was too hot to do anything else. 

There was also the "John Bull printing set" with the stamp pad and the "back to front" letters. We made our own "thank you" cards that way. We could colour in the stamps with our pencils. It saved a lot of writing. Activity packs have multiple uses.