We started the Christmas season by creating paper plate calling birds. We are ending the Christmas season or the twelve days of Christmas with this super cute Three Kings Day craft.
What is Three Kings Day?
You may have heard it called Epiphany or Twelfth Day. It celebrates the three kings or wise men that traveled to see Jesus. It is usually celebrated on January 6th. The names given for the kings are Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar.
Each of the kings brought a gift fit for a king. I looked up the meaning of each gift given by the kings on Crossways. I knew what they were, but I wanted to know why those gifts were given. One king brought gold in recognition of Jesus royal standing. One king brought frankincense in recognition of Jesus being divine. The final gift given by a king was myrrh. Myrrh was used for burials. It may have foreshadowed Jesus need to die for our sins.
How to Make the Three Kings Craft
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Materials needed:
- Paper towel or toilet paper rolls
- Origami Paper Double Sided Color
- Scissors
- Glue sticks
Directions:
We started by cutting two paper two rolls into 4 or 5 inch sections. ( We could have used toilet paper rolls.) We decided that the paper towel rolls we have are made of heavier cardboard. (That had pluses and minuses.)
Then we select origami paper for the Three Kings Day king’s robes, facial color, beards and crowns. We chose really deep colors for the robes. Kings tended to wear deep royal colors didn’t they? We chose a peach color for the three kings faces. After doing some research I realize we should have selected different colors. Many think that the kings each came from different cultures and that probably none of them had peach colored skin.
We cut a wide strip for paper from each of the robe colored sheets and then glued them on the bottom section of the paper towel rolls.
Three narrow strips were cut of peach colored paper and they were glued right above the bottom strip on each of the rolls.
Beards were then cut out of the colors of origami paper we thought would be good for facial hair. They were then glued in place. The beards helped cover where the face paper and robe paper meet.
Finally a narrow strip was cut out of each of the crown colored papers and was glued in place. This next step was the trickiest. We had to make zigzag cuts out of the top of the paper towel roll to make it look like a crown. If we have gone with a roll made of thinner cardboard it would have been easier to cut. The Three Kings Day king’s crowns would have probably have looked neater.
We did make gifts for the kings to carry, but decided against putting them on the kings. You may decided that your Three Kings Day kings really need gift to carry and hands to hold them.
If you do make a set of Three Kings Day kings of your own, please leave me a comment below telling me about them or share a picture of them on my Facebook page.
Here are some other cardboard tube crafts:
This is a wonderful activity to do with my girls!
I am so glad you like it!
That turned out GREAT!!!!