It’s day four of the Easter school holiday and with the poor weather this week, the little ones might be starting to climb the walls it might be time to bring out the craft supplies.The Royal Gazette recently visited Kaleidoscope Arts Foundation art teacher and mother, Amanda Harkness, as she made Easter crafts.Her helpers? Her four-year-old son AJ and two of his buddies six-year-old Jack Kyme and his brother Charlie, three.“We’re making a Easter mobile together,” said Mrs Harkness. “You cut out strips of decorative paper and then glue pairs of the paper strips together across a long string to make what I call paper sandwiches. The string is in the middle of the sandwiches. Then you tie some kind of decoration at the bottom. With one mobile I rolled a plastic Easter egg in glue and glitter and then tied the egg to the end of the string. You could also tie decorations like little rabbits or bumble bees to the bottom. When you put the mobile outside the wind catches it and the paper strips turn for a nice effect.“I used decorative scrapbook paper. It is a nice size at 12in by 12in so you don’t have to trim it down, and you don’t have any left over.”She modified the design from a decoration she found online for St Patrick’s Day. A lady had sewn strips together with a sewing machine to form a rainbow and tied a pot of gold at the end.“The idea is so versatile,” Mrs Harkness said. “You can do it for any season. You could vary the shape of the strips. You could make some strips shorter and some longer. You could get a stencil and cut them out so it gives you the illusion of an egg. For the younger kids if they didn’t have the patience to sit and do the sandwiches, you could get them to just fold one strip in half, and do alternating sides. The pastel colours make it Eastery or spring-themed.”As Jack carefully cut out strips of pastel-coloured scrap book paper and Charlie giggled with AJ about having to make a “paper sandwich” it was pretty clear that the boys were enjoying themselves.Mrs Harkness had another Easter-themed idea that involved silk ties and Easter eggs. Her idea is a great opportunity to get rid of dad’s favourite Mickey Mouse tie.“You can use anything silk with a pattern on it,” she said. “You take an egg in the shell and wrap it up in the silk tie, and then in plain fabric. You cover the eggs in water and then add half a cup of vinegar and boil for 20 minutes. The pattern of the tie comes off onto the egg. Sometimes the pattern has more of a dramatic effect on a white egg. You wait until the egg is completely cool and then unwrap it. Your egg should have a pattern from the tie on it.”Mrs Harkness preferred not to drain the egg before wrapping it because the shell became more fragile that way, and more liable to be crushed or cracked during the wrapping process. Another tip is that The Barn in Devonshire sells silk ties for $1, so you don’t necessarily have to cut up dad’s favourite.Mrs Harkness will be using a similar technique this summer at the Kaleidoscope Foundation summer camp to make Russian Faberge eggs.Her venture into craftmaking came about by happenstance. Mrs Harkness started off as a nursery schoolteacher, but became sick.“My immune system was all over the place and the doctor said if I ever wanted to see my immune system again, I’d better find another career,” she said. “Children carry so many germs. So I went to work in an office, but I found it just wasn’t for me. Kaleidoscope was advertising for a position for an art teacher just about the time my son was ready to go to school. I applied for it and I got it. The rest is history, as they say. I am well now and don’t have any problems with my immune system anymore.”She said she feels like she is now doing what she was meant to be doing. She loves the children and doing different activities with them.Although some people sometimes think girls are naturally more artistic than boys, she disagreed.“Development wise, girls usually develop their fine motor skills first and then their gross motor skills and it is the opposite for boys,” she said. “Girls are usually happy to sit and play with dolls and fiddle with things and boys are more outside, running, kicking boys and riding bikes. I think it is more about where they are developmentally. I have a class of home-schooled boys who are eight and nine. They love it and it is an outlet.“For the younger kids (girls and boys), I just feel like everything is a learning experience. It doesn’t matter what they learn at that particular lesson as long as they are learning. It might be some kids aren’t quite there with their cutting skills, so the particular project you are doing is helping them with their cutting skills which is also fine motor. Other kids, might not get the freedom of expression that you would like them to have, because not everyone has a paint easel set up in their house. It is about giving them freedom of expression.”