Campfire Craft

 I'm not sure how it happened really. One minute we got the tent out from its hiding place under the couch. (If you don't stow stuff under there you should!) and then we were making a lake out of blue blankets and crafting a campfire out of paper for roasting cotton ball marshmallows. In the end, "camping" became quite the creative production. And it's even better because in a couple weeks I won't feel that badly about throwing it out- provided I can sneak it past the bosses.

The boy scouts are good campfire builders. We are good pretend fire builders. Smokey would be proud. And this is how we did it.



What You Need:

for your fire:

• red and orange construction paper
• scissors
• glue and maybe scotch tape

Here's What You Do:

1. 1. To make your fire: Cut out flames the long way out of your construction paper, leaving the bottom edge nice and straight and untouched. I drew out an easy zigzag flame shape and handed it over to my 4 year old to cut- good practice! 
2. Out of leftover scrap, cut more flame shapes and paste them onto the bigger pieces here and there and wherever.
3. glue the edge of one side onto the edge of the other side so you have a ring of fire.
4. Cut out little u-shaped mouse holes along the bottom edge for your "firewood" to go through so the fire stands nice and straight on top instead of falling over.

for your kindling and fire wood:

• brown paper
• glue and some scotch tape
• scissors

What You Do:

1. Cut your brown paper into varying widths by 9" or so. Honestly, it's not a science and I have no idea what length we cut. 
2. Roll each strip nice into a stick and glue it closed or tape it shut. We did both. It did not want to stay.
3. Stick your sticks through the mouse holes you cut in your fire to make it look like they're on, well, fire.

for your marshmallows on a stick:

• brown pipe cleaners
• cotton balls
• white electrical tape to keep the balls neat
• scissors.

What You Do:

1. Snip your cotton balls from top to bottom but only half-way through so that you can "unroll" them a little. 
2. Wrap the snipped cotton balls around your pipe cleaner. 
3. Wrap a length of white electrical tape around the marshmallow to help it keep its marshmallowy form. (We experimented and did some on the top and bottom of the marshmallows too but really it just looked better when we wrapped the sides of the cylinder in one go and it was way easier to do too.) Now you'll be able to pull on and off your untoasted and roasted marhsmallows to eat right up.
4. Roast those puppies over your fire.

 

Who knows, maybe you can even con your kids into taking a nap "under the stars" when they're done. I wish I had!

Pipe Cleaner Rainbow

Whatever you call them- pipe cleaners, chenille stems- they are a great crafting material. They're fuzzy, they're bendy. You can twist them up and twist them together. You can use them for making animals, as stems on flowers (heck, I use them in the kitchen to clean out those nasty straws on sippy cups too.).

Yesterday, after way too much television, it was time to do something with our hands and creativity. Spiff and I decided we wanted to make a rainbow. But we're pretty bored with paper rainbows. Ah ha, I had just bought pipe cleaners for another project that very morning. Of course there were a rainbow of colors. But gluing them onto paper is pretty boring, and also pretty frustrating frankly. Pipe cleaners don't lend themselves much to the 2D or glue. But they do have nifty bending powers and they do have prickly ends just suited for sticking them into things. Like an egg carton. And, voila, our rainbow craft was born.


What You Need:

• Pipe cleaners in the colors of the rainbow
• an egg carton
• craft glue
• cotton balls
• an embroidery needle or pencil or paper clip end for poking.

What You Do:

1. Rip the top of your egg carton off so you just have the bumps. Cut the bumpy bottom of you egg carton down the middle the long way so you have a long row of 6 cups.
2. In each second cup in from the ends, poke a line of holes with your needle for each of your pipe cleaners. This is where we'll shove the ends through. So you'll have a hole for each end of each stem.
3. Bend the purple pipe cleaner into an arch, push one end through the innermost hole on each side. pull them ends so it'll be small enough to fit inside the next color. Do the same with blue in the neighboring holes, green in the next one, yellow in the next, orange, then red. Adjust the ends if you have to so they fit inside each other.
4. Now bend up the ends so they tuck nicely into the cup on the underside. Now you have your rainbow.
5. Let's make some clouds! (Because egg cartons are ugly.) Stretch several cotton balls so they're wispy and glue them all around and on top of the exposed egg carton.
6.  

And that's all there is to it! 

Pot of Gold Rainbow

We go to a lot of birthday parties and use a lot of gift bags. This means we also have a lot of tissue paper. I happened to check and we had all the colors for a rainbow. My kid loves rainbows and tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day so I could not resist. We made a Rainbow with a Pot of Gold at the end. It was definitely a parent-assisted endeavor with all the cutting involved but there was plenty for little fingers to do- glue, glue, glue and even some fun stretching and crumpling which my toddler was more than happy to assist my preschooler in.

What You Need:

tissue paper in rainbow colors, cut into long strips 1" wide.
white cardstock
cotton balls
string, cut about double the length of the tissue strips
gluestick
tape
scissors
hole punch



What You Do:

Cut your cloud out of the white cardstock. Ours was the full 8.5 inches wide so all 7 strips of color could sit nicely in a row along it. Take your glue stick and glue a line along the back of your cloud. Put the ends of the tissue strips on this line, one by one, right along. Do it backwards- purple (or "violent" as my kid calls it) to red so when you turn it over it's in the right order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.). Pat, pat, pat.

Turn it back over. Cover the front of the cloud with more glue and stick cotton balls all over it, stretching them out a little to make them more, I don't know, wispy and cloud-like. Voila, rainbow and cloud. You can stop here, or you can add your pot of gold:

We folded a scrap of cardstock in half and cut out a pot shape, then colored one side of each black. Then we crumpled up orange tissue paper and stuck it on the blank back of one along with one end of the string. Then we glued the other side of the pot on top of that for a tissue sandwich, having both black sides facing out.

Hole punch the top of your cloud. String the other end of the string through that, leaving enough to tie a loop for hanging. Knot it and tie that loop.

Hang it up in a window.