Do your kids love crafts and bikes?

After a morning of cleaning our bicycles, my youngest daughter had nothing but love for her sparkling clean machine. All the dirt was gone, as was the grease, the faded stickers, and glue residue from stickers which had been peeled off long ago.

My daughter proudly wielded a screwdriver for the first time, removing a bell from her old bicycle, cleaning it, and using it to replace the one that came with her new bicycle. One that she's never been happy with, due to its tinny sound, and hard to reach location. She solved that problem and fixed it with her own hands.

Once finished she insisted we ride to the nearby ¥100 store but would not tell me why, just that she had a good idea which required I ride with her to the ¥100 store (and provide her with ¥300!) Intrigued by what she could possibly be planning we set off.

At the ¥100 store she proceeded to purchase two craft punches, one in the shape of a star, and the other shaped like a cat. She also bought a roll of reflective tape and I could see her plan coming together.

Back home she quickly stamped out a pile of reflective star and cat shaped stickers before heading downstairs to stick them all over her bicycle. But the genius of her creative idea did not end there as she had planned from the beginning to use her cute new stickers to cover up scratches and marks on her frame.

Now her bicycle is spotlessly clean, there isn't a scratch to be seen and although small, her stickers play a part in making her more visible at night without looking ugly by day.

If your kids love bikes and craft I can highly recommend this activity, as for a few hundred yen your children can punch out literally hundreds of stickers with which to decorate their bikes and when a child is proud of their bike they will want to ride it all the time.

(Oh, you don't have to be a child to enjoy this activity either!)

I'm so proud of my daughter for coming up with this idea, the fact she worked so hard cleaning her bicycle and that she solved the problem of her hard to reach bell all by herself.

I've had a great day, made all the better by the fact that now I have reflective cat stickers on my bike too!