ART-TASTIC is a big heavy beauty of an activity book, written by Sarah Pepperle and produced by the Christchurch Art Gallery. We think it’s marvellous and so do the judges of the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. Keen to try it out? Here are four ART-TASTIC spreads guaranteed to keep the kids occupied these school holidays.
The winter school holidays are officially the worst school holidays. It’s cold and rainy and the cockroaches have migrated to the pantry and you peg the washing out every morning in woodsmoke and fog, knowing it’ll never get dry. There’s no Christmas. No Easter. The rich kids have gone off to the islands or snow, but not your kids. Ho no, your kids are at home, bored with their books, bored with TV, bored out of their minds, apparently. They’ve taken to casually punching each other in passing and have set about rearranging the house into a series of manky surfaces and trip hazards worthy of an early-2000s ACC ad.
Every morning you look at yourself in the mirror and you remember the golden school hols of your own childhood and you think: I love them so, I miss them when they’re at school, I will make this a great day for them. You plan to organise… stuff – glueing, cutting, writing, and doodling, all that good pottery at-home brain-food stuff. But the day gets away on you, again, and the kids are bored and need, again.
WELL NOT TODAY. Today you can plonk yourself down with a cuppa, tell the kids to have at these activities and pat your good self on the back. Look at you and your constructive arty mind-expanding parenting!
This one’s perfect when little attention spans are shot to pieces by sugar and screens (download here):
Our own Toby Morris with equestrian lessons for all (download here):
This is definitely going to produce some solid gold kid-poignancy (download here).
And lucky last, one for the wordsmiths (download here).
Extracted with permission from ART-TASTIC by Sarah Pepperle (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, $29.99), available at Unity Books.