Paper Crafts for Children

It is pretty spooky how a few folds and a few cuts creates an awesome web!!

	Start with a square piece of paper and fold it in half across the diagonal so that you have a triangle. Fold the triangle in half again so that you have a smaller triangle, and fold it in half some more times.
	Trim off the uneven section at the bottom of the triangle, if you trim it as a curve it is quite effective. Cut into the triangle as pictured.
	Open the paper up to reveal your spider web design.
	After you have tried your first one, I am sure that like us, you will have lots of fun experimenting to see how effective different patterns are.

A great result from all the paper crafting the children have done over the years – paper crafted homework ideas are easy to come by and easy to do!

And they have an enthusiastic helper in me – well I was not allowed to help too much, but I happily tore paper up and gathered materials.

Assignment one – communicate your interests visually. Football is one of the interests, so he made a papier mache football with interests drawn and written on it.

Assignment two – display an idiom.
She chose ‘Put Your Foot in Your Mouth’ and also used papier mache in a covered shoe box.

All you need is a piece of photocopy size paper, and a few folds later you have a puppet – a very wide mouth puppet! I have popped all the steps into a worksheet that you can download and print, as well as summarised here.

	Fold a peice of photocopy size paper into three so that it is long and skinny.
	Fold it again into four sections so that it forms a concertina.
	Add details to the top layer. Your fingers go in the space created between the layers of paper. Your thumb goes in the space in the bottom layer and then you can open and close the mouth really wide.!
	Once again my daughters attempt is much better than mine!

I love that this craft has a useful purpose as well as looking great in the kiddies rooms, and you get to do some recycling too.

You need a sturdy shoebox, 2 or 3 empty card rolls, newspaper torn into small strips, glue and paint.

Cut the card rolls into thirds and place on your shoe box lid in two lines. If your box is smaller you may think two rows of three looks better.

Secure the toilet rolls to the lid using some of the strips of newspaper dipped in glue. Use long thin pieces to cover the top of the toilet rolls making sure you smooth them down well. Continue to cover the rest of the lid with the strips of newspaper until you have three layers over the entire lid. I don’t wait for each layer to dry as I am too impatient. I think of this as a basic form of papier mache.

Make sure you don’t fold the paper under the rim of the lid as you will make it smaller and it won’t fit on the box.

Leave to dry thoroughly.

Paint the box and lid with a good craft paint (if you are going to use a light coloured paint, you may like to use white paper on your last layer of papier mache so the words won’t show through). Leave to dry. To make it even hardier, and also if you have used a cheaper poster paint, you might also want to seal it with a craft varnish.

This colorful character is a hoot!

You will need an empty toilet roll or roll of card, some colored paper in a variety of colours, a small piece of black card and a small piece of white paper.

Cover the toilet roll with a piece of colored paper. To make great owl ears, cut a half moon shape from the front and back of the top of the toilet roll so they meet at a peak at each side. Cut strips from colored paper long enough to circle the toilet roll. Make lots of cuts along the strips making sure you don’t cut right through. These will be the feathers of the owl. Carefully run the ‘feathers’ along the edge of a pair of scissors to make them curl. Be gentle as it is easy to pull them off. Glue each feather strip around the toilet roll leaving a gap in the front with the two top strips. For the tummy cut out an oval from colored paper and draw small ‘v’ shapes for feathers. Wait till you have made the eyes before gluing in place so you can work out the best place to put the tummy. Use the black card to cut out a pair of eyes. Using this as a template cut out another pair of eyes using the white paper and then cut them a little smaller. Draw in some pupils. Cut out a small triangle from orange and glue to the back of the eyes to form the beak.

This is a quite beautiful picture created from some very simple materials

Draw a tree branch on some long white paper. It is the shape of the paper that helps to make this so effective.

Flatten the toilet rolls and then cut into quarters. Make sure your cuts are fairly even as you want the edge to glue evenly to the paper.

Color the toilet rolls – green or autumn colors – remember to color the top edge that will be seen.

Dip the toilet rolls into the PVA glue. I used a plastic lid and put a blob of glue into it but you can paint it on if you wish. Press the toilet rolls into place on the branch and leave to dry thoroughly. Press the leaves down a couple of times whilst they are drying to make sure they adher evenly all round.