Cardboard Tubes Archives

Three Kings Day Craft for Kids

January 3, 2015 By Deirdre

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:

American Flag Tubes

Homemade Flute

Five Little Crows

Homemade Instruments for Kids – Flute

December 11, 2014 By Deirdre

Last week I shared a four calling birds craft as a part of the 12 Days of Christmas series I am participating in with a number of kid bloggers. This week I was given day 11. That is 11 pipers piping and we made cardboard flute to represent it. We have fun making homemade instruments for kids using everyday items.

Wait! There aren’t flutes mentioned in the 12 Days of Christmas. Are there? Well, no there are not. The 11^th day of Christmas is supposed to be pipers piping. I just couldn’t come up with a way to make bagpipes! It fun to make homemade instruments for kids instruments that they can actually make music with rather than make a craft for.

The next best thing to make was a homemade musical instrument that is in the shape of a pipe. We have tons of paper towel rolls at my house, because we go through a ton of paper towels. I thought it would fit the 11^th day theme.

I searched for directions on how to make a homemade instruments for kids that would actually make music and found a few. Some of them even used paper towel tubes! While they all had great directions, none was just what I wanted to make. You know what that means don’t you. The cardboard flute in this post has a slight twist to it.

Directions for Making the Flute

We started by cutting out a cardboard circle (plug) just about the size of the opening at the bottom of the cardboard tube. This was placed into the tube at the top. Then it was pushed into place with a plastic spoon.

Next the holes were placed in the tube. A rectangular whole was cut about six inches from the top of the tube with scissors. Then we used scissors to create round holes about an inch apart down the length of the cardboard tube. We ended up with a total of six round holes on our flute. (If you feel more comfortable making the holes for your children, you can make them for them.)

Once the body of the flute was created, it was time to decorate it. Since a child would be blowing over the top of the flute, I wanted to make sure that the paint was non-toxic. The art teacher at the school I teach at pointed me to a brand of acrylic paint that would be great for this project. She went on to suggest that we used gold paint to cover the tube. It would make the tube look like a real musical instrument. “It is a good idea to make homemade instruments for kids that are super safe for them to explore,” she told me.

I think adding a design to the body of the flute would be a great idea. We didn’t happen to do that. If you do, please use on non-toxic markers or paint near the areas your children might place their mouth. (As I mentioned before, you want your homemade instruments for kids to be safe.)

We found that our flute does make noises. They are not very musical, but they are fun to make.

More Homemade Instruments for Kids

Red Ted Art has a wonderful post on 10 Homemade instruments for kids you can make at home.

Imagination Tree made a really cool rain stick.

Make and Takes show you how to make a coffee can drum.

Welcome to day 4 of the 12 Days of Christmas Series, a kid-friendly activity to celebrate each of the 12 days! Be sure to stop by your 7 favorite bloggers for each of the 12 Days of Christmas Series. You will find amazing art projects for kids, cooking activities, learning fun and more.

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ Stir the Wonder ~ JDaniel4’s Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ ABC Creative Learning

What kinds of homemade instruments for kids have you made?

Five Little Crows Preschool Games, Songs and Craft

September 29, 2014 By Deirdre

In the fall my family visits several farms. We go to one to pick apples and another to find pumpkins to display on our porch. We usually see scarecrows and crows cutouts on the farm. Scarecrow games and crafts have been featured on the blog before, but we haven’t done preschool games, songs and a craft featuring crows. I thought it was about time.

After some searching I found two songs or rhymes that could be used to practice choral reading (reading together) or play preschool games. Actually they could be used with older children too.

Songs and Rhymes for Preschool Games

Five Little Black Crows

Five little black crows
By the old barn door,
One flew home
And then there were four.

Four little black crows
By the old oak tree
One flew home
And then there were three.

Three little black crows
With nothing to do
One flew home
And then there were two.

Two little black crows
Out in the sun
One flew home
And then there was one.

One little black crow all alone
Through the day
He ate in the fields.

5 BLACK AND SHINY CROWS
(To the tune of 3 green and speckled frogs)

5 black and shiny crows — Sat on a scarecrow’s nose,
Eating the most delicious corn: YUM, YUM
Scarecrow, he shouted BOO! — 1 crow, away she flew,
Then there were 4 black shiny crows: CAW! CAW!

Preschool Games and a Craft

Crafting Crows

While you could sing or chanted the crow verses above on their own , I thought it would be fun to have some crows to use along with them. Our set of five little crows were super easy to make!

Materials:

2 Paper towel tubes cut in half ( You could use five toilet paper tubes instead.)
Black construction paper
Yellow construction paper
White construction paper
Scissors
Glue stick

Directions:

Cut the paper towel tubes in half. We ended up with six paper towel tube sections that were about 5 1/2 inches long.

Cut black construction paper into a rectangles that are about 5 1/2 inches tall and 6 inches long. Glue them onto each cardboard tube.

Cut out black wings for each crow. Then cut out five black triangles. Make a row of several vertical cuts in the wide base of each triangle to give your crow a feathery fringe for the top of their heads.

Glue the wings and the fringe onto your crow.

Next cut out a set of five white circles and black circles for your crows eyes. When you have them just right, you can glue them on your crows.

Finally cut out yellow beaks for each crow and glue them in place. We chose to cutout flat triangles. You could cutout diamond shapes. The diamond shapes could be folded in half. The bottom half could be glue to the crow and the top half could be folded down. This will give you a beak that can open and close.

Preschool Games

You can use the five little crows craft while you are singing or chanting the song. Here are some other preschool games or ways you can use them.

Retelling Game- Have children take turns using the crows as puppets to retell what happened to the crows.
Add a Verse- Have the children use the crows to create a new verse to the chant or song .
Counting Backwards- Children can say or sing the song starting the opposite direction. The Five Black Shiny Crows can start at one and crows can fly in one at time. You can say, “In she flew!” or “In they flew!” In this version the crows wouldn’t be afraid of the scarecrow. The chant can easily be said reversing the number of crows without changing the words.

For more cardboard tube activities you can check out my Tube Crafts board on Pinterest.
Follow JDaniel4’s Mom’s board Toilet Paper Tube Crafts on Pinterest.

I bet you can come up with more preschool games with the crows. If you have one you would like to share, please share it in a comment below.

Friendship: Stickfiggy and Lott Share

June 29, 2012 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read.Explore.Learn.! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

I am participating in the MeMe Tales #readforgood Readathon 2012 this summer. During the Readathon, anyone who signs up on the MeMeTales site is given access to the books being featured for free. Each week the books follow a theme. The theme this week is friendship. The books being spotlighted this week are StickFiggy Makes a Friend, Lott’s Tea Party, and Arthur (A dog looking for a home.).

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

While MeMeTales featured three books on friendship on the Readathon this week, we are just going to look at two. Both of the books I am going to share with you feature stick characters that reach out and do something for friends.

StickFiggy Makes a Friend is a very cute story about StickFiggy and an egg. While heading out to play StickFiggy comes across an unattended egg. He decides to stop and watch it until its mom returns instead of going off to play. It takes awhile for the mom to come back. By the time she does it is no longer an egg, but a chick.

Lott’s Tea Party is the tale of a little stick girl that plans a party for her friends. Readers of her story see all that she has to do to get rid of the party and read what it happening in each stage of planning in a single word that is placed on each page. One word is all that is needed to share all that she does to get ready for her friends to come.

What did we do to explore the themes of the books?

Invited a Friend to Play

JDaniel has been missing his best friend from school. I decided to invite him over for a play date so both boys could spend time together.

Made a Friendship Bread

I found a great recipe for Friendship Bread online that didn’t require starter yeast. JDaniel and I had a wonderful time making it. JDaniel had a wonderful time decorating it. We worked on making a StickFiggy character with painted popsicle sticks and a cardboard circle to help us remember to share the story with his friend.

JDaniel and his friends ate one piece. My husband and I inhaled most of the rest. It is really delicious. Maybe it is the chocolate pudding you add to the mix that gave it that little bit of extra something.

Created an Outdoor Tree Play Area

There is a tree line that separates our yard from the next door neighbors. At the end of the tree line is a large magnolia tree that JDaniel and his friend love to climb and play under. The branches of the tree bow down and form a tree play area.JDaniel and I hauled out a blanket, some learning activities, and some toys out to the tree to fill the tree play area.

The area contained the following:

1. Chalk to draw on the tree with.2. A writing a drawing activity that was based on the StickFiggy Finds a Friend story.

3. A cardboard tube that could be leaned against the tree to create a ramp of different levels for a toy truck.4. Activity mats that could be illustrated with small sticks JDaniel and I gathered.

JDaniel decided that there were leaves all over the ground and that they would be fun to play with too. He thought we should reattach them to the tree with clothes pins. I thought was a great idea.

When his friend arrived, they explored most of the playthings and climbed the tree. It was a perfect place for friends to hang out.
What are your favorite books about friendship?Disclaimer: I have been given access to the MemeTales: Readathon books and will receive copies of the books. All the thoughts and information in this post about the books are my own.