This is an easter nest halfway through construction, being made from shredded paper and fruit nets chopped into pieces, layered up using flour and water paste as a glue. To get the nest shape, we covered a small bowl with tin foil to ease getting it out after it had dried! They were very sticky and messy and went down a storm as you can imagine, although the little ones were fairly covered in little bits of shredded paper!
To complement the nests we made chicks from soft woolly jumpers, adding eyes, beaks and wings from felt. My nearly five year old hand sewed this chick without any adult help beyond having the needle re-threaded a few times and some verbal instruction!
There are some chick sewing patterns here if you want to try it out, I use embroidery floss as it is fairly thick and holds the fabric better when the stitches are a little uneven or quite far apart. Four and five year olds are probably fine with a cross-stitch needle, they are thicker than normal sewing needles and blunter at the end. For really little ones, you can buy plastic needles or 'bodgers' from craft stores or ebay (don't get the ones with a blob on the end, they won't sew through anything!), although with plastic needles you will need a loose knit jumper or it will be very frustrating to get the needle through the fabric and little ones will lose interest.
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