Paper Octopus

This morning we made paper octopuses. Just cut out the octopus head from the printable below and either color and use that as the head or use it as a template on a piece of construction paper. Then cut 8 strips length-wise out of another piece of construction paper. These are the octopus's arms. Use paint dabbers (do-a-dot, etc.) to make suction pads on the arms. (I actually folded the paper into eighths first and then had the kids dab the paint before cutting them, easier for them.) Twirl the arms around a pencil so they're nice and spirally and glue the ends onto the back of the head so that they are dangling down. Voila. Octopus. Spiff deemed these "Silly AND cool!" and then he was off to feed them some of Squidgee's toy fish.


Variation: Use a balloon instead of the paper head.

The printable:

Balloon Launch

Today's activity is not really a craft so much but it sure was fun. We launched balloons with a long book balanced on a hand weight. On one end we put the balloon and on the other we smacked down our hands, feet, weight, or whatever else we could find to launch that balloon up. To get your balloon to go up, up, up! make the end of the board longer on that side and drop a weight on the other. A great way to spend some time on a gross indoor kind of day and recall some of those high school physics classes (you know, if you missed them). Go fulcrums!