Paper Plate Macaw

This Macaw was painted in parts and then assembled. 

Handprint Hedgehog

My son has been learning all about animals from around the world for the last 12 weeks at school. One of his homework activities is to teach his family something he had been doing at school. Today he decided to teach us how to make simple hedgehogs (and Macaws)

 First we took a small hand and traced around it - notice the little hands helping to trace the even smaller hands :-) Then we cut out the hand print in different coloured cardboard (paper is easier, but since we have heaps of old folder dividers in the cupboard we used those instead)

Then we take a paper plate. I finally managed to find paper plates at the Reject Shop just in time for this craft otherwise you would be seeing my attempt to cut out a circle. I assure you that that is not a pretty sight! 

Then we arranged the hand prints in rows along the plate. We cut out two eyes and coloured in the middle, and a rain drop shape for the nose. Here we have our hedgehog all ready to hang up.

And here we have the example that our 'teacher' made for us to work from.

Panda Mask

A search of my cupboard this week showed me that the one item we lack is a paper plate. It is rather hard to make a paper plate mask without one. However, since the kids wanted to make the mask now and not at an unspecified date in the distant future, we needed to find an alternative.

We unearthed some plastic plates in the kitchen cupboard to make the mask. Because it was a plastic plate I cut out the holes for the eyes and found a picture of a panda for the kids to copy. This is what they came up with. The ears are made from scraps of furry material glued onto cardboard. The rest is just a black marker.

Finally we found a paddle pop stick to tape on to hold the mask in place. Much easier than having to tie and untie the strings all the time.

Paper Plate Ladybird

Say hello to our friend Mrs Ladybird. This is a new addition to our insect collection. I am quite fond of the lopsided nature of this happy bug.