Paper Crafts for Children

We used some paper crafts to create a forest which was perfect for the children to use to shelter their animals

It was arbor day here in New Zealand but way to cold and wet for us to plant a tree, so we created some from paper instead. This is one of the easy paper crafts for children, and we think pretty effective too – the animals seem to like them.

Method
You need an oblong piece of paper which you cut lots of slits in, about three-quarters of the way across the paper. Then roll up the paper and secure at the bottom with a piece of tape. Carefully pull up the center of the tree to bring the ‘branches’ up. Arrange the branches however you like, we used all sorts of different ways to arrange our paper branches. We used crayons to make paper rubbings from a cane chair for the bark which we wrapped around the bottom for the trunks. You need to make a cone out of paper or thin card so it can stand up, then it is ready for the plastic animals to enjoy. I have made a tutorial with all the steps pictured, and a PDF you can print out at Paper Tree Tutorial.

	We curled the paper branches around a pen to make the curly effect on this shrubby paper tree.
	To create this very leafy effect we cut extra slits at the ends of each paper branch, and then bent them away from each other to make them stand out a bit more.
	This tree has two different tones of green paper. We started with two pieces of paper that I taped together before we started cutting the slits. This tree also has extra slits cut at the ends of the paper branches. These extra slits have been curled as well.
	This little shrub has different sized slits cut into the paper before it was rolled up. The skinnier slits are rolled so that they are in the center of the tree. We also did not pull the center of the paper up as far so that it looked more like a shrub than a tree.

For a much more sophisticated version of these trees have a look at the ones that are on the ikat bag blog, they are very cool!