All posts by RP Admin

New, Summer

Barbecue Decorations

If you’re planning a summer barbecue this year, why not go the whole hog and decorate your garden?  It’s a great way to involve the kids and is sure to amuse your guests…. not to mention that decorations are always a good talking point as people mingle.

Here’s what we’ve got in the way of printables to help you:

You might also find these useful:

We hope you enjoy your garden party or barbecue and that you get good weather!

New, Our Favourite Printables

Two Riding Certificates

A few people have asked us whether we have any horse riding certificates and up until now we’ve had to say no.  However, we recently created these two which we hope you’ll find useful.

Please Note: To type text onto these certificates, you will need to open them in a good PDF reader such as Adobe’s.  If your browser opens them automatically, you may find you cannot type on them, in which case just find the “download” option and save them to your machine.

Blank Horse Riding Certificate Templates

This riding certificate template is an editable PDF, ready for you to type on.  It’s completely free for personal use, though if you’re using it on other sites or social media, we do ask that you give a shout out or link.  That’s because having lots of people visit our site lets us keep our printables free.

Editable Riding Certificate Template

Or you might prefer the template below.  There’s lots of room on it for you to add the name of your own stables or other organisation, along with the details of whomever it’s for.  Then all you have to do it print it out.

Horse Riding Certificate Template
Editable Horse Riding Certificate Template
Colouring, New, Spring

St George’s Day Printables

If you’re looking for things to print out for St George’s Day this year, we’ve gathered all ours together below.  You might also want to check out our general dragon page for further ideas.

First off, here are a couple of St George certificates:

We have some dragon certificates available too, which might come in handy.  Here are a couple of examples – click here to see more:

We’ve also got some knight and dragon-themed colouring:

Looking to decorate your home or classroom?  You might find something useful in our collection of St George’s Day bunting:

You might also like these free printable greetings cards:

St George’s Day Story for Young Children

One of the problems with the St George’s Day story is that like many old tales, it can be viewed as a bit violent and sexist by today’s standards.  While this isn’t such an issue for older children who can understand it’s of its time, it can make it hard to tell to little ones.  With this in mind, we’ve created what we hope is a slightly more child-friendly version of the story.  We haven’t changed the core narrative, but we have retold it by:

  • making it clear that this particular dragon was dangerous and cruel;
  • empowering the princess to take part in deciding her own fate, rather than just being treated as an object for her father to give away as a prize in a male battle;
  • glossing over the violence of the fight between the dragon and George, which in many of the older stories is a bit gory and drawn out.

The PDF of our St George’s Story for Children is free to download and we hope you find it useful.

St George Activity Idea for Older Children:
If you are dealing with older rather than younger children, you could create a great learning activity by telling them a more adult version of the story and asking them how they would change it to tell to a younger child, or to suit a modern audience.

Other Activities:

This St George’s Day word search is another fun printable activity.  Just click/tap it to download the free PDF.

There are two more word searches below which are suitable for St George’s Day.

Colouring, Our Favourite Printables, Spring

Colouring for Spring

This is just a quick post to gather together all our favourite colouring pages for spring.  Great for those rainy afternoons with the children, though fingers crossed you won’t get too many!

Along with colouring pages, you might also enjoy the following printables which are popular in spring:

Mermaid Certificates

Learning to Swim - free mermaid certificate
Learning to Swim

Our mermaid certificates are always popular in spring – though we’re never quite sure why!  Possibly it’s a time when children learn to swim.  Anyway, they’re also fun for children’s parties, oh, and we’ve got a mermaid invitations and a mermaid treasure hunt you can print too.

Pastel Alphabet Bunting

Perhaps it’s the soft spring colours that make our printable pastel alphabet bunting a popular download at this time of year.

Tooth Fairy Notes

Notes from the Tooth Fairy

These little notes from the Tooth fairy never stop being popular, no matter what the time of year. At the moment, they are among our top five most visited pages.

Easter, Our Favourite Printables, Spring

Messages from the Easter Bunny

Hello and welcome to a post where we’ve added together all our best messages from the Easter Bunny.  (If you’re Australian you might want our Easter Bilby resources instead.)  Whether notes, letters or certificates, we bet your little one would love to hear from the most magical rabbit in the world this year.

Along with the little messages and certificates above, one of our favourite Easter resources is this full-length letter from the Easter Bunny.  It’s a lovely thing for a child to find with the eggs on Easter Morning… adds a sprinkle of magic to the this holiday occasion.

Looking for some blank Easter notepaper?  Try these:

 

Easter, Spring

Paper Easter Decorations

A small pile of paper chains decorated with the Easter Bunny
Small Pile of Easter Bunny Paper Chains

With Easter around the corner, you might feel like brightening your home with some Easter decorations.  Ours are all free to print out and our favourites, new and old, can be found below.  They’re a great way of making Easter parties or meals more festive and a lots of fun for any creative kids who want to help you prepare.  We hope you have a magical Easter this year.

You might also enjoy crafting these Easter ornaments.  They look best stuck onto card, unless you’re going to print them onto card in the first place of course.  The nice thin about sticking them onto card though, is that you can put a picture on both sides.  You’ll also need something sharp like a skewer or a knitting needle to create the hole to thread the string through.

Easter, Spring

Best of the Easter Bilby

Easter Bilby

It’s nearly that chocolate-munching time of year again and if you’re in Australia, you might prefer the Easter Bilby to deliver your treats this year.  He’s an endangered alternative to the Easter Bunny, but just as magical.  Our favourite printable bilby resources for this Easter are below:

If you’re after more Easter Bilby resources, here are a few we like out there on the web – and they were all free when we looked:

Easter Bilby Printable Bambino Pack – This is a downloadable pack of printables for children including colouring in pages.

Bilby Colouring Pages – Several colouring in sheets of Bilbies, all free to print out for your child.

Bilby Printable Maze – Just one printable game-sheet in the form of a maze.  Your child has to find which way leads to the Easter Bilby’s lost eggs.

Printable Bilby Mask – This will take you straight to a PDF of a mask you can print and cut out from mothernatured.com

 

New, Our Favourite Printables

This and That for Valentine’s

Hello!  We generally create printables for children but these days, Valentine’s day is for everyone.  Far from being just for couples, we’re seeing cards sending love to all sorts of family members and friends, not to mention the wider world.  Pink and red decorations appear in shops and homes alike and some people are even using it as an opportunity to spoil themselves.  And why not?  It”s good to love yourself, too.

So, with the aim of moving with the times, we’ve put the printables we thought you might find useful this Valentine’s Day here on one page.  Thinking that the kids might want to help out, we’ve focussed on printable four-fold cards and colouring in.  We hope you, your children, your family and whoever else is special to you enjoy them.  Oh, and from all of us here at Rooftop Post, have a happy and magical Valentine’s.

 

What to write in your Valentine’s Card:

It’s never easy to think what to write in your Valentine’s card, and of course, a lot depends on who you’re writing to.

From a Secret Admirer

For example, if you’re sending a card from a secret admirer, it’s best to stick to funny or lightly romantic – as a mystery sender you don’t want to sound too serious (because that can make some people nervous) and it’s attractive to have a sense of humour.   If you’re really stuck, here are a couple of ideas:

  • I’m sending you this Valentine’s card to let you know that whenever I see you, you make me smile.  Have a wonderful day!
  • Roses are red,
    Violets are blue,
    I’m incredibly lucky
    To be friends with you!
  • I like you.  Even more than chocolate/football/any other (light-hearted) favourite thing.  Have a very happy Valentine’s Day!
  • You’re that “nothing” when people ask me what I’m thinking about.
For a Partner

On the other hand, if you’re writing to a long-term partner, pretty much anything goes.  You know their likes and dislikes better than anyone, and even though you might feel as if you can’t think of anything, just take the plunge because most of your thoughts will be appreciated.  Remember, this person already likes or loves you.  If you’re really stuck, thanking them for all they do and is a good start, and should get you thinking about what those things are.  Name them, if you can.  After all, letting someone know you’ve noticed all those small ways they make your life nicer is always going to make them smile.

For Family and Friends

For friends or non-romantic family, think of the sorts of things you’d put in a normal greetings card and just edit those sentiments a bit to suit Valentine’s.  Here are some examples:

  • Happy Valentine’s Day!  I wanted to send you a card to say I hope your life is filled with love for the whole year ahead.
  • As it’s Valentine’s, I just wanted to let you know how much you are loved and appreciated by me (and all the family).   Have a great day.
  • Wishing you a very happy Valentine’s Day from a family who loves you.
  • To my best friend, I thought I’d use Valentine’s Day to send you lots of love and let you know how special you are.  My world is about a million times better for having you in it.
New, Spring, Summer

Flamingo Treasure Hunt and Party Printables

Fabulous flamingos are everywhere these days and are increasingly popular with children as well as grown-ups.  With this in mind, we’ve created a rhyming flamingo treasure hunt, fun for all flamingo-loving kids.  It can be used for parties or just as a run-around-the-house game on an ordinary afternoon.

What You Need:

A printer for the clues of course, and some scissors to cut them out.  This is an indoor game and we have tried to make sure that the clues only include objects (such as a book or a chair) that exist in any house.  You’ll also need some “treasure” to leave with the last clue.

Flamingo Treasure Hunt Clues:
Printable flamingo treaure hunt clues - a game for a children's party.
Printable Flamingo Treasure Hunt
GET CLUES AS PDF
A Couple of Tips:

Along with your treasure or prize, you could add a fabulous flamingo certificate for the winner.  Obviously, you won’t know who that is until the game takes place, so just make sure you have a pen handy to add the winning child’s name.

If you’d rather not print any images, the text of our clues is below.  Just highlight, copy and print.

The prettiest birds
To fly through the air
Have left their first clue
Not far from a chair.

Flamingos like bathing
Their feathers so pink,
So look for a clue
Near a bath or a sink.

When flamingos get tired
They rest their soft heads,
They’ve left you a clue
By somebody’s bed!

Flamingos love sunshine
And everything bright!
There might be a clue
Near some sort of light.

The next one is tough,
The flamingos are sure
They’ve hidden it well,
In the dark of a drawer.

Flamingos are fast,
They can fly like a rocket,
They’ve dropped the next clue
Into somebody’s pocket!

My goodness you’re close,
Don’t stop, look, look, look!
The flamingos have slid
The last clue in a book.

You’ve found it, well done,
Give your feathers a shake,
What a splendid flamingo
You’d certainly make!

More Flamingo Printables

If you’re going the whole hog and throwing a flamingo party, you might find the following resources useful.  They’re all free to print out for personal use.  We hope you and the children have lots of fantastic flamingo fun.

Flamingo Scrapbook Paper

Finally, we’ve got a couple of pieces of flamingo themed scrapbooking paper below, which might come in useful if you’re making further flamingo resources of your own.  For example, they  could be helpful if you’re making party place mats.  You could also use them as special  wrapping paper if you’ve got a flamingo fan in the family.

If you’re looking for more treasure hunts, you might like to check out the ones we’ve created for mermaids and pirates.

Pirate and Mermaid Treasure Hunt Clues
Pirate and Mermaid Treasure Hunt Clues

 

 

Our Favourite Printables, Winter

Useful Printables for January

Happy new year!  We hope 2018 brings much joy and magic to you and your little ones.  January is always a quiet month for our site but for those of you who have taken the time to pop by (thanks!), we’ve collected together what we think are the most useful printables for this month.  Many are old favourites but there are one or two new resources as well.  Just scroll down and you’ll find them below…

January can be a good time to get the family active again after all those Christmas goodies, so these certificates might come in useful too:

Oh… and don’t forget it’s Burns Night on Jan 25th!
Finally, there’s always time for fairy messages, no matter what the time of year.  Whether you’re writing your own or using some of our fairy notes and certificates, here are a few of our favourites: