**We were sent these items for the purpose of this post, as always, all thought and opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, more details can be found here**

With the kids at home, it is so easy to let them watch TV or play on their screens, I get it – it’s an easy option, one I’ve taken to doing far too much of recently. One thing my kids do LOVE is arts and crafts, but that can get messy so isn’t for everyone.

A few of the less messy options we love in this house are items which are available from Spinmaster – making things doesn’t always have to equal mess which what I love about the following items – once I have set the kids up with the activity I can sit back with a cuppa or actually get on with some work while they are happily peacefully playing.

KumiKreator bracelet making set

This is something we reviewed a couple of years ago and one Emmy still goes back to time and time again.

Who remembers making friendship bracelets as a kid? I used to spend hours in my bedroom knotting together embroidery threads and it would take so long. Thankfully this cool machine does all the hard work for you – just add the bobbin spools to the machine and turn the handle, a chain will appear and the hardest part is adding the clasps to the end, which really isn’t hard at all.

Emmy spends ages making these cool and funky bracelets for her friends.

Learn to braid hair

Emmy loves to have her hair done and recently has wanted to learn to plait herself, so she can tackle my hair (oh the joys – I hate playing hairdressers but kids love it so much don’t they).

Thankfully, Emmy’s Candylocks dolls have the perfect hair to learn how to plait and braid, so she has been playing with these.

You can read our review of those dolls here.

Indoor sandcastles

We are missing the beach, so this Kinetic rainbow sand is the closest we will get to the beach for a while.

I hate sand in the house however kinetic sand I don’t mind so much as it stays together and makes far less mess than traditional sand does.

It’s almost putty-like in texture so can be moulded, flattened and played with and it never dries out making it perfect if your kids are as forgetful as mine (they never put the lids back on pens, playdough or sandboxes). This Sand kit comes with 6 tools so you can colour mix, build sandcastles and cut your creations. Both Emmy and Harry love playing with this and spend hours making rainbows, castles and hearts etc with it bringing the beach indoors without having to don the sun cream.

Making models with Meccano

Harry loves dinosaurs so he loved this Meccano set with which you can create 10 different dinosaurs with.

Sadly, you have to take apart each model to make another one which Harry refused to do. This one is for older children really and does require a lot of concentration, attention and in Harry’s case, a lot of help.

There are 179 pieces to this so I highly recommend doing this on a tray unless you really want to be searching for small pieces all over the floor (I learned the hard way here).

The instruction booklet is very clear and easy to follow but the pieces are very small so small hands may struggle a lot – you can read Kara’s full review here, Harry gave up trying to build his model and I had to take over.

How have you been keeping the kids from getting bored?