AMUSING SMALL INVALIDS.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19352, 4 September 1934, Page 3

AMUSING SMALL INVALIDS.

The task of keeping- small children amused Is always a difficult one, and doubly so when they are recovering from an illness (says the Glascow Herald). They begin to fidget after so much lying in bed. Then it is that the ingenuity of mother or nurse is taxed to the utmost to devise fresh methods of entertainment. This is especially the case when the Illness is an infectious one and the usual nursery playthings are not available. When the child Is a girl a cheap doll may be bought. Run up a few clothes far it, not forgetting a little nightdress, so that dolly can be ill and put to bed with her little mother, and a wee dres-sing-jacket and dressing gown for convalescence. A doll’s bed can be contrived from a couple of cardboard shoe boxes and some strips of calico and muslin: a little wardrobe from an empty cigar-box stood up on end and painted, with few hooks tacked inside, and a chest of drawers from matchboxes covered with gaily-coloured paper, and then gummed together, with shoe buttons for handles. A distraction which never fails to please is the making of sets of dolls’ furniture out of corks and pins and scraps of wood and material. The making of “ paper families,” too, generally proves engrossing. Obtain old fashion books and other illustrated magazines. The coloured figures, men, women, children, animals, etc., should be cut out and pasted into a big scrap-book made of brown paper. Each page is arranged with a “ family" on it—father, mother, and children, with their household pets, or perhaps a farm and farm animals. Then thrilling stories may be made up about each one. When the coloured figures are all used up the others can be crayoned and utilised in the same way. Another plan is to procure a large supply of coloured tissue paper (four sheets a penny) and show children how to fold and cut the paper to form pretty patterns. Quite a number of dainty little trayeloths and d'oyleys ran lie made in this way for use in the sickroom and burnt after each meal.