One can never go wrong with a bag of pipe cleaners. Simply bending the flexible, fuzzy boogers into a variety of shapes can keep a kid occupied for a hefty chunk of time.
You can get fancier than just making pipe cleaner cats and jamming them up your brother's nose. If you also have an egg carton and some paint (or markers or glitter), you can play Mother Nature and make a garden bloom.
Mrs. Chicken (of the perennially entertaining blog Chicken and Cheese) has a tutorial up so that you can amuse your own children with making a bowl full of pretty poesies. Just keep in mind that the goal is to occupy little hands, not to impress Martha because she's probably not going to drop in for tea.
Unless, of course, she is. In which case -- ignore everything I just said and tell her hi for me.
Photo Credit: Mrs. Chicken a.k.a. A.L. Hatch
