Frozen Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Last week I shared with you a Frozen Olaf cup craft for kids and you absolutely loved it! I decided to share another Frozen Olaf idea with you that features a sensory bin filled with Frozen Olaf himself and some really cool glass pebbles. Hope you love it too!

The goal of this sensory bin was to create a fun bin (hence having Frozen Olaf in it) that contained a wide variety of textures. The pipe cleaners, pebbles, Frozen Olaf’s eyes, and smile are all various textures. By place, an icy Olaf and cold water in the bin this activity explored temperature too. The water wasn’t super cold but was cold enough to keep Olaf frozen for a little while.

Would you like to make a Frozen Olaf for a sensory bin?

Let’s start with the supplies you will need. Here is what we used:

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Sky Blue Fusible Pebbles( I got a bag at a dollar store.)
Orange Foam Sheet
Peel and Stick Wiggle Eyes
Black cloth ( I cut up a reusable insulated bag from the grocery store.
Black Chenille Stems
Round cake pan
Dish detergent
Scissors
Roasting Pan

Directions for Creating Frozen Olaf:

We started by placing cold water and some dish detergent in a round cake pan. It is the dish detergent that gave us the bubbly white look Frozen Olaf was going to need to look like a real snowman.

The cake pan with soap water was put in the freezer for about twenty minutes to get the ice to start to form.

While Frozen Olaf’s head was starting to freeze up, we cut a nose out of orange foam. (Foam can handle the wet. Construction paper would have started to disintegrate.) We also cut his smile out of a reusable insulated bag. Just under the black layer of cloth was batting. I was able to cut through the black fabric to create a tooth for Frozen Olaf. (If you can’t find a bag like that, you could use black foam for his mouth and white foam for his tooth.)

When soapy water in the cake pan looked slightly frozen, we placed his facial features on. They sank below the surface a little, but not by much. If your facial feature seem to be sinking a lot, you may want to take them off wait a few minutes more for the ice to freeze up before trying to add them again. We also added several sections of black pipe cleaner at the top for his hair.

Once the facial features were on, we added a little more soapy water to help hold them in place.

Then we waited overnight before taking Frozen Olaf out to play.

When we were ready to play, we put the round cake pan in a roasting pan with cool water and let it sit for a few minutes to loosen our icy creation up. It didn’t take long.

We lifted it gently up and put it into the water. I added cold water to the bin to make Frozen Olaf last longer.

Then we added the glass pebbles to the bin to give it a more frozen feel.

Exploring Frozen Olaf

I didn’t give any direction about how to explore this bin. It was just fun to feel, play, and explore. Children tend to build their own activities this way. For this activity self-direction worked well.

For more early learning activities you may want to explore my Early Learning Board.
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We didn’t see Frozen when it was in the movie theater last winter. JDaniel was introduced to Frozen Olaf while watching in on DVD at a friend’s house recently. He was definitely JDaniel’s favorite character from the movie. I decided it would be fun to make Frozen Olaf at home and we hunted through our craft supplies and under the kitchen sink for cups to make him.

We ended up not having white Styrofoam cups under the sink so, I borrowed some from my mom. (I had purchased a large supply of them for her last week so, I knew she had some.) We found the rest of the supplies among the craft elements in our crafts closet.

Here is what we used to make Frozen Olaf:

Styrofoam cups (two)
Black felt
White felt
Orange construction paper
Black pipe cleaner
Glue stick
Scissors

How we put Frozen Olaf Together:

Cutting Out His Facial Features

The first thing we did was cut out the mouth and eye components out of felt. The eyes are made of two small black circles and two large white circles. The mouth is made of a large fun filled sort of pocket shape made with black felt and a white tooth. We looked carefully at the tooth Frozen Olaf had in the movie and decided it had rounded sides rather than straight sides. (You could probably make the tooth either way.)

The second step was to cut out a large triangle out of orange construction paper. Our nose is a little bit wider than Frozen Olaf’s nose was in the movie, but I think it still looks great.

Gluing on His Facial Features

Once we had all the facial features ready, we glued them on to the cups. The mouth components were glued to cup that sits right side up. The mouth seems to look best right below the rim of the cups we used. You may want to try them in various places on the cup before gluing them down.

The eye components were glued at about the halfway point of an upside down cup. Frozen Olaf’s eyes are really close to his nose. By placing his eyes halfway down the cup it gave us the look we wanted.

Frozen Olaf’s nose had glue placed on only the top half of it before it was added to his face. We wanted to be able to disassemble cup craft and stack the cups together when we stored it to enjoy later.

Giving Frozen Olaf Hair

Frozen Olaf’s hair was made of a pipe cleaner cut into fourths. After cutting the pipe cleaner into fourths, we poked a small hole in the bottom of the cup with the scissors. The hole was just the right size for pipe cleaners to fit it and not large enough for them to wiggle around it. When all the pipe cleaners were in place, we twisted the ends inside cup together to keep them in place.

Three Fun Things About Our Frozen Olaf

One of the fun things about our Frozen Olaf craft is that you can turn the cups back and forth until two cups are placed where you want it to be. It is fun to try to balance the cups just right.

The second fun thing about it is that you can stack the top part of the head into the bottom part of the head. This makes them great for traveling from school to home. It also makes them easy to store for later.

The third fun thing about keeping the two sections separate we didn’t have to worry about attaching them. (That might have been tricky unless we want a tape them together on the inside or back. We decided not to have tape appear on or in the craft.)

Other Fun Children’s Art Projects

If you are looking for other children’s art project on the Children’s Art board displayed below. It is a group board contributed to by top kid bloggers.

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