INDOOR OCCUPATIONS AND THINGS TO MAKE

A Dutch Street
You cannot only wander from one climate and from one nationality to another, but from one century to another. If you are studying early American history nothing is more fun than to make a street in an old Dutch set...

Painting
Painting is an occupation which is within almost everybody's power, and of which one tires very slowly or perhaps not at all. By painting we mean coloring old pictures rather than making new ones, since making new ...

Flags
An even more interesting thing to do with a paint-box is to make a collection of the flags of all nations. And when those are all done, you will find colored pages of them in any large dictionary, and elsewhere too...

Maps
Coloring maps is interesting, but is more difficult than you might perhaps think, owing to the skill required in laying an even surface of paint on an irregular space. The middle of the country does not cause much ...

Magic-lantern Slides
If you have a magic lantern in the house you can paint some home-made slides. The colors should be as gay as possible. The best home-made slides are those which illustrate a home-made story; and the fact that you c...

Illuminating
As a change from painting there is illuminating, for which smaller brushes and gold and silver paint are needed. Illuminating texts is a favorite Sunday afternoon employment. ...

Pen And Ink Work
There is also pen and ink drawing, mistakenly called "etching," for which you require a tiny pen, known as a mapping pen, and a cake of Indian ink. If the library contains a volume of old wood-cuts, particularly Be...

Chalks
In place of paints a box of chalks will serve very well. ...

Tracing Themselves
Smaller children, who have not yet learned to paint properly, often like to trace pictures either on tracing paper held over the picture, or on ordinary thin paper held over the picture against the window pane. ...

Pricking Pictures
Pictures can also be pricked with a pin, but in this case some one must draw it first. You follow the outline with little pin pricks close together, holding the paper on a cushion while you prick it. Then the pictu...

Easter Eggs And Painting
Home-made Easter eggs are made by painting pictures or messages on eggs that have been hard-boiled, or by merely boiling them in water containing cochineal or some other coloring material. In Germany it is the cust...

Spatter-work
Paper and cardboard articles can be prettily decorated by spatter-work. Ferns are the favorite shapes to use. You first pin them on whatever it is that is to be ornamented in this way, arranging them as prettily as...

Scrapbooks
Making scrapbooks is always a pleasant and useful employment, whether for yourself or for children in hospitals or districts, and there was never so good an opportunity as now of getting interesting pictures. These...

Scrapbooks For Hospitals
Children that are ill are often too weak to hold up a large book and turn over the leaves. There are two ways of saving them this exertion and yet giving them pleasure from pictures. One is to get several large she...

Composite Scrapbooks
Sometimes it happens that you get very tired of one of the pictures in your scrapbook. A good way to make it fresh and interesting again is to introduce new people or things. You will easily find among your store o...

Scrap-covered Screens
A screen is an even more interesting thing to make than a scrapbook. The first thing to get is the framework of the screen, which will either be an old one the covering of which needs renewing, or a new one made by...

Collecting Stamps
Stamp-collecting is more interesting if money is kept out of it and you get your stamps by gift or exchange. The best way to begin is to know some one who has plenty of foreign correspondence and to ask for all his...

Postage-stamp Snakes
Old American stamps can be used for making snakes. There is no need to soak the stamps off the envelope paper: they must merely be cut out cleanly and threaded together. A big snake takes about 4,000 stamps. The he...

Puzzles
If you have a fret saw, and can use it cleverly, you can make at home as good a puzzle as any that can be bought. The first thing to do is to select a good colored picture, and then to procure from a carpenter a th...

Soap Bubbles
For blowing bubbles the long clay pipes are best. Before using them, the end of the mouthpiece ought to be covered with sealing-wax for about an inch, or it may tear your lips. Common yellow soap is better than sce...

Shadows On The Wall
Shadowgraphy nowadays has progressed a long way from the rabbit on the wall; but in the house, ambition in this accomplishment does not often extend further than that and one or two other animals, and this is why o...

Skeleton Leaves
Leaves which are to be skeletonized should be picked from the trees at the end of June. They should be perfect ones of full growth. It is best to have several of each kind, as some are sure to be failures. Put the ...

Ferns
It should be noted that if you intend to skeletonize ferns, they should not be picked before August, and they must be pressed and dried before they are put into the bleaching solution, in which they ought to stay f...

Wool Balls
Cut out two rings of cardboard, of whatever size you like, from one inch in diameter up to about four inches. A four-inch ring would make as large a ball as one usually needs, and a one-inch ring as small a one as ...

Wool Demons
To make a "Wool Demon," take a piece of cardboard as wide as you want the demon to be tall, say three inches, and wind very evenly over it wool of the color you want the demon to be. Scarlet wool is perhaps best. W...

Bead-work
Among other occupations which are not in need of careful description, but which ought to be mentioned, bead-work is important. It was once more popular than it now is; but beads in many beautiful colors are still m...

Post-office
"Post-Office" is a device for providing the family with a sure supply of letters. The first thing to do is to appoint a postmaster and fix upon the positions for the letter-boxes. You then write letters to each oth...

The Home Newspaper
In "The Home Newspaper," the first thing to do is to decide on which of you will edit it. As the editor usually has to copy all the contributions into the exercise-book, it is well that a good writer should be chos...

Paper And Cardboard Toys A Cocked Hat
To make a cocked hat, take a sheet of stiff paper and double it. Then fold over each of the doubled corners until they meet in the middle. The paper will then resemble Fig. 1. Then fold AB AB over the doubled co...

Paper Boats
If the cocked hat is held in the middle of each side and pulled out into a square, and the two sides are then bent back to make another cocked hat (but of course much smaller); and then, if this cocked hat is al...

Paper Darts
Take a sheet of stiffish paper about the size of this page and fold it longways, exactly double. Then fold the corners of one end back to the main fold, one each side. The paper sideways will then look as in Fig....

Paper Mats
Take a square piece of thin paper (Fig. 1), white or colored. Fold it in half (Fig. 2), and then again in half (Fig. 3), and then again from the centre to the outside corner, when it will be shaped as in Fig. 4. ...

Paper Boxes
Take an exactly square piece of paper (cream-laid note-paper is best in texture), and fold it across to each corner and press down the folds. Unfold it and then fold each corner exactly into the middle, and pres...

Cardboard Boxes
Cardboard boxes, of a more useful nature than paper boxes, are made on the same principle as the house described on p. 239, and the furniture to go in it, as described later in the same chapter. The whole box can b...

Scraps And Transfers
Paper boxes, when finished, can be made more attractive by painting on them, gluing scraps to them, putting transfers here and there, or covering them with spatter-work (see p. 275). Scraps can be bought at most st...

Ink Sea-serpents
Dissolve a teaspoonful of salt in a glass of water, dip a pen in ink and touch the point to the water. The ink descends in strange serpent-like coils. ...

A Dancing Man
The accompanying picture will show how a dancing man is made to dance. You hold him between the finger and thumb, one on each side of his waist, and pull the string. The hinges for the arms and legs, which are m...

Velvet Animals
The fashioning of people and animals from scraps of velvet glued on cardboard was a pleasant occupation which interested our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers when they were children many years ago. A favor...

Hand Dragons
All the apparatus needed for a "Hand Dragon" consists of a little cardboard thimble or finger-stall, on which the features of a dragon have been drawn in pen and ink or color. This is then slipped over the top of t...

Other Uses For Cardboard
Once you have begun to make things out of cardboard, you will find no end to its possibilities and should be in no more need of any hints. After building, furnishing, and peopling a dolls' house, a farm or a menage...

Cardboard Cut-outs
There are a great many cut-outs issued nowadays, which may be bought for a small sum at any toy shop. Perhaps the best among these are "The Mirthful Menagerie," "The Agile Acrobats" and "The Magic Changelings." "Th...

Kites
In China, and to some extent in Holland, kite-flying is not the pastime only of boys, but of grave men. And certainly grave men might do many more foolish things. To feel a kite pulling at your hands, to let out st...

Kite Messengers
A messenger is a piece of cardboard or paper with a good-sized hole in it, which you slip over the string when the kite is steady, and which is carried right up to the kite by the wind. ...

A Simple Toy Boat
The following directions, with exact measurements, apply to one of the simplest home-made sailing-boats. Take a piece of soft straight-grained pine, which any carpenter or builder will let you have, one foot long, ...

Walnut Shell Boats
To make a boat from a walnut shell, you scoop out the half shell and cut a piece of cardboard of a size to cover the top. Through the middle of this piece of cardboard you thrust a match, and then, dropping a littl...

Walnut Fights
Here it might be remarked that capital contests can be had with the empty halves of walnut shells. A plate is turned upside down, and the two fighters place their walnuts point to point is the middle. At the given ...

Suckers
A sucker is a round piece of strong leather. Thread a piece of string through the middle, and knot the string at the end to prevent it being pulled through. Soak the sucker in water until it is soft, and then press...

Skipjacks
The wish-bone of a goose makes a good skipjack. It should be cleaned and left for a day or two before using. Then take a piece of strong thin string, double it, and tie it firmly to the two ends of the wish-bone, a...

A Water-cutter
The cut-water is best made of tin or lead, but stout cardboard or wood will serve the purpose. First cut the material into a round, and then make teeth in it like a saw. Thus:--Then bore two holes in it, as in t...

Whistles
With a sharp knife a very good whistle can be made of hazel or willow, cut in the spring or early summer. A piece of wood about three inches long should be used. Remember what an ordinary tin whistle is like, and c...

Christmas Evergreen Decorations
Getting ready for Christmas is almost as good as Christmas itself. The decorations can be either natural or artificial or a mixture of both. In using evergreens for ropes, it is best to have a foundation of real co...

Paper Decorations
The simplest form of paper chain is made of colored tissue paper and glue. You merely cut strips the size of the links and join them one by one. For paper flowers, paper and tools are especially made. But for the...

Mottoes
Mottoes and good wishes can be lettered in cotton wool on a background of scarlet or other colored linen or lining paper. Scarlet is perhaps the most cheery. Or you can make more delicate letters by sewing holly be...

Christmas Trees
In hanging things on the Christmas tree you have to be careful that nothing is placed immediately over a candle, nor should a branch of the tree itself be near enough to a candle to catch fire. After all the things...

Bran-tubs Or Jack Horner Pies
Bran-tubs or Jack Horner Pies are not so common as they used to be, but there is no better way of giving your guests presents at random. As many presents as there are children are wrapped up in paper and hidden in ...

Philopenas
Two games with nuts and cherries may as well go at the end of this section as anywhere else. Almonds sometimes contain double kernels. These are called Philopenas, and you must never waste them by eating both yours...