By Mary-Ann Russon

The weather might be terrible and the children are stuck indoors, but there's no need to pull a long face. If you're running out of ideas to keep them occupied and out of your hair, why not try our special how-to guide for making a model cardboard town?

Handmade model towns or villages are excellent diversions for both adults and children as it allows everyone to be imaginative and to create anything they like. It's a good way to reuse and recycle, and you can keep adding bits to it, so it's an ongoing project. What's more, once the model is done, the children can get out their toy cars and little toy figures and play more games imitating real life about what would happen in their perfect town.

What you will need:
Cardboard boxes (shoe boxes, cereal boxes)
Clean 1 Litre drink cartons
1 Large piece of hard material for the base (card, cardboard, vanguard sheet, plastic)
Toilet rolls
kitchen rolls
Crepe paper (green)
Construction paper (large paper in different colours)
Stickers
Cut out shapes
Craft glue
Scissors
Poster Paints
Paintbrushes
1 Black marker (with a thin nib)
1 Pencil
1 Eraser
Magic markers
Sticky tape

STEP ONE: Decide with your child how they want their town to be laid out. It's a good idea to use card or vanguard sheet you can draw on for the base, otherwise paste white paper over cardboard and draw on that. Get the child to draw out roads (circular as well as straight) in pencil, leaving large spaces between the roads for the buildings to go. Then, use the black marker and go over the lines your child has drawn.

STEP TWO: Pick out some of the boxes to be different buildings and start decorating them with your child. There are many ways you can do this – you could paint the boxes (like the picture above), you could paste construction paper over the boxes and draw on them with magic markers, or you could paste stickers and other shapes you've cut out onto them. Remember to leave a side of the box untouched, as it will be glued to the base.

STEP THREE: If you've painted the boxes, place them carefully in some sunlight and leave them to dry for a couple of hours. In the meantime, get your child to start drawing in details on the town map with the magic markers, such as lines in the middle of the road, flowers in the gardens, double yellow lines, anything they like.

STEP FOUR: Next it's time to make the cars and trees. Take a 1 Litre drink carton and attach 2 toilet rolls to a long side with sticky tape, so that It looks like a car. Then pass it to your child to paint. For the trees, take a kitchen roll and paint it brown, paste brown construction paper on it, or leave it as it is. Then stuff the top with some green crepe paper, artistically crushed, so it looks like a bower of branches coming out of the top of the kitchen roll. Glue or tape the crepe paper to the kitchen roll.

STEP FIVE: When all the details on the base and the buildings, vehicles and trees are complete, use the craft glue to paste them onto the town map. Leave to dry for at least 3 hours, and then you're ready to play!

Picture Credit: Photo by Iggy Jingles Crafts (http://iggyjingles.blogspot.com/)