Kitchen solutions for children

• Homemade bubbles

The ingredients for homemade bubble-blowing liquid can be found at your kitchen sink — washing-up liquid and water. Pour about 2 table-spoons washing-up liquid into a plastic measuring jug and fill with tap water (1 part washing-up liquid to 15 parts water), then mix gently. This bubble solution performs best when left to sit overnight before use. Hard water will yield poor results, so test your tap water by making a small batch of solution. If you can’t get bubbles to appear, switch to distilled water.

• Making play dough sculptures

Why buy colourful sculpting dough when you and your child can make your own from inexpensive cupboard staples? Here’s how: mix 1/2 cup (90g) salt together with 1 cup (140g) flour. Using your fist, make a deep indent in the mixture and pour in 2/3 cup (180ml) water. To add colour, simply use some non-toxic water colour paint or food colouring. Knead well and shape into a ball. Roll out and hand your child some blunt-edged biscuit cutters to cut out shapes, mould into sculptures or make into ornaments. Store it in an airtight container, and you’ll be able to use it again.

• Make your own super slime

Slime is a favourite of children everywhere. To make it, combine 1 teaspoon ground psyllium husks (available from pharmacies, health food shops and online) with 1 cup (250ml) water in a lidded jar and shake vigorously for 3 minutes. Pour into a microwaveable container and add a few drops of green food colouring. Microwave on High for 3 minutes (stop the process if the slime starts to ooze out the top of the container). Let rest for 3 minutes and microwave for another 5 minutes. Remove carefully and let cool for an hour. Store in an airtight container.

• A kitchen cupboard toy box

Most babies know that the kitchen is where the real action is: it’s full of shiny things, interesting sounds, yummy smells and — food. It’s always important to childproof your kitchen, to install safety latches and plugs, and to make sure that anything even remotely dangerous is out of reach. Once you’ve done this, you can designate one floor cupboard to be a baby’s kitchen toy box and stock it with a few specific items that your child can play with: smaller pans and lids, a few plastic containers, a wooden spoon, a sturdy set of measuring spoons and nesting metal measuring cups that he can bang to his heart’s content.

• Shake, rattle and roll

Some metal and plastic food packaging, such as a Pringles chip box, comes with a plastic lid. Turn them into fun noisemakers by cleaning and drying an empty can or canister, making absolutely sure that all sharp edges have been removed or filed down and putting in a small amount of dry pasta, cereal, hard lollies, dried beans or rice. Secure the plastic lid with gaffer tape, testing the noisemaker to be certain the top won’t come off. A quieter alternative is to put crunchy cereal into a cardboard biscuit box and secure the top with tape. When rolled on the floor, this homemade rattler makes a great swooshing sound.

• From milk bottle to toy caddy

If there are too many small toys under your feet, you can bring some order to the toy invasion by making a simple toy carrier from an empty 4-litre juice bottle or household bleach container with a handle. With scissors or a utility knife, carefully cut a large opening out of the top third of the bottle, leaving the handle area and the plastic cap intact. Cover the cut edge with gaffer or masking tape (although the cut edge could be filed or sanded smooth, taping gives extra protection). Let your child decorate the carrier with permanent markers and then fill it with small toys. It may be a good idea to create a toy caddy for each child in your family, to avoid disputes that inevitably erupt at playtime!

• Invisible lemon-juice ‘ink’

If your child has a taste for the mysterious, teach him the secret of invisible writing. All that’s required is a small bowl of lemon juice, a cotton bud and a piece of paper. Dip the bud in the juice and write on the paper. When the paper is dry, there will be no sign of the lemon-juice ‘ink’. Then hold the paper near to, but not touching, a hot light bulb, moving the paper slowly over the beat source. Magically, the writing will turn brown and legible —it’s a trick worthy of Harry Potter and his friends.

• An egg carton game

 Here is a fun activity that can help pre-school children to master counting and sorting skills. With a marker, write the numbers 1 to 12 (or 15) in the sections of a large egg carton. Then provide edible items such as shaped cereal or raisins and get the child to put the right amount in each numbered section. You can play a similar sorting game by having him separate different shapes and colours of cereal, dry pasta or dried beans.

Alternately, give the child a bowl of raw fruit and vegetable pieces — sliced carrots and apples, peas, grapes, mandarin segments, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, small button mushrooms —whatever you have on hand and get him to sort the food into the egg sections by type.

• Food colouring to brighten snowy-day play

After they have pelted one another with snowballs, children can get fidgety for more fun on a snowy day, so try this: fill several plastic squirt bottles — tomato-sauce bottles are ideal —with water and add a few drops of food colouring to each. Children can ‘draw’ designs on the snow with the coloured water.

• A carrier for precious papers

School children occasionally have important papers or homework to take to school — such as term projects that ate up hours of their time (not to mention yours!). Tubes from rolls of paper towels, standard-size plastic wrap, aluminium foil or waxed paper are just the right size for A4 sheets of paper. For larger projects, think about saving longer tubes from wrapping paper or oversized aluminium foil. Be careful not to cram too much into a cardboard tube, though, or the papers could be difficult to extract, coming out in less-than-ideal condition.