My family loves papercrafts, but sometimes my girls find the crafts too complicated to complete. That’s why I’m so happy with Pattern Play. This is a simple papercraft book, with colorful hand-painted patterns, to make 19 different paper animals. The premise is simple: Each page has a painted pattern on one side, and a solid color — with a simple pattern of an animal — on the reverse. So we cut out the animals, following the pattern, and fold it down the middle as directed. There are numerous stickers to add eyes or other details to each animal. And that’s it!

The front of the book is soft cover, while the back cover of the book is over 1/8 inch thick, and provides a solid surface to use as a table while working on each page. There are also tips for more advanced paper crafts for using the leftover paper, too. My girls are quite proud of their creations, and they learned something new about each one with the factoids included with each pattern. We’ve had a lot of fun with it, think it would make a fun gift for kids, too.