Book Bank at the Botanic Gardens + Paper Quilling Fun

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” by Marcus Tullius

Imagine bringing your children to the Botanic Gardens and reading books together on the lush greenery coupled with background birds chirping sound, taking in fresh air and enjoying a peaceful bonding moment on a beautiful day.

This is exactly what this book bank initiative is really about – to encourage a love of reading, and what better place than in our own beautiful Gardens.

If you are heading towards the Singapore Botanic Gardens, you should bring along a book that you wish to give away and visit the Book Bank outside the Gardens Shop at Tanglin Gate. Over here, you can drop your book and exchange for a book on the bookshelves to bring home, or simply donate some good books, or pick up one and read at the Gardens. But do remember to return it so that we always have the bookshelves full of books and not depleted to none. This is a meaningful campaign started by The Gardens Shop @ Tanglin Gate to cultivate a love for reading, especially among the little ones who visit the Gardens, as well as to make bonding time with the family more fun and rewarding.

Book Bank at the Gardens

For a start, these books are contributed by The Gardens Shop. We certainly have some good conditioned books that the kids have read and loved and we will be happy to share with others while in exchange, pick up new ones or preloved ones by others. Hopefully, the next time we visit the Gardens, this bookshelf will be so plentiful of books that it requires a bigger corner!

Art Pazzionate

As part of the initiative to kickstart the Book Bank at the Gardens, we were invited along with some parent bloggers to a Paper Quilling session together with our children. Little tables were set up outside the Gardens Shop. It was a perfect location to do crafts with our young ones. I have never known what is Paper Quilling until now. And after posting some of our paper quilling masterpieces on instagram, I realized that I have been missing out such crafts since my school days! Apparently, even my BFF made these 20 years ago!

Basically, Paper Quilling is really an easy craft work but yet it can produce amazing art pieces with endless forms of ideas and creativity. In simple words, it is a rolling of a strip of coloured paper and pasting many of it to form a picture art. There are a few basic forms to make up the art work. It all started with rolling the paper strip into a coil and then using the fingers or tools to pinch or press to make these shapes.

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Click here for tutorial on making each of these basic shape

My Missy 11 chose a Phoenix which was one of the most challenging pictures that we could choose from. Master 9 chose a bird design which he added a few more decorations to make it more complete.

Paper Quilling Phoenix

Paper Quilling Bird

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If you are new to Paper Quilling, and would like to try it, I understand that the Paper Quilling colour strips are sold in places like Art Friend and Popular Bookstore. In my opinion, it is suitable for young children from age 5 onwards. It can be a great bonding activity and there is no limit to your creativity. We have seen many versions of the same bird design with different touch of colours and improvised Paper Quilling shapes. You can even do it on a birthday card, photo frame or gift jar lids, etc.

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Now, we have the masterpieces on the children’s bedroom door.

Phoenix

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More amazing pictures of Paper Quilling on the net.

Bride paper quilling art
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This will be a good craft activity to do with your children 🙂

And don’t forget to encourage your children to bring their books to the Book Bank this March school holidays and each time you visit the Botanic Gardens. Remember: the book bank is located outside The Gardens Shop at Tanglin Gate.

Photo by The Gardens Shop
The Gardens Shop: Photo by The Gardens Shop

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