As part of the curriculum in Year One, my son has been doing a lot about 3D shapes, like cubes and cylinders. As a result he's got very interested in creating 3D shapes, like the Wall-E costume he made here.
This is a really simple craft, and one that is fairly easy but fun to put together. It helps the child with shapes and with construction as well.
What you will need for this project:
- sheets of coloured card and paper
- glue stick (like Pritt Stick)
- scissors
- felt tip pens or pencils
- glitter (optional)
Choose a subject matter that you know will interest your child. However, make sure it is based around a very simple shape. In this case, I went for an underwater theme, as my son is quite captivated by anything fish related. A fish shape can be quite a simple shape to create using ovals, and also triangles if you like. Also, there's scope to have it swimming through seaweed, and bubbles.
This is one project that took quite a bit of preparation on my part. I cut out all the little shapes that we might want to use in advance. With an older child, you could get them to do this. However, I thought that with the number of shapes required, he'd soon lose interest in such a repetitive task.
First you can make the main picture. In this case, the fish. Together we both cut out the large ovals that make the fish. One big one for the main body. Fold this in half, and glue one side to a sheet of card. Do the same with a smaller folded oval for the fin, and we did a couple to use as the tail.
You can glue on googly eyes if you have them or you can make some using white and black. This is what we did for the big fish in the middle.
Next we added the seaweed. This is where the Pritt Stick is definitely required. I made the mistake of trying to use PVA glue to start with. However, it didn't dry fast enough, and caused the seaweed structure to slide around as each piece was added. Plus little hands tend to go heavy on applying the glue rather than light. Let's just say it all ended up as a soggy mess.
I took small circle shapes and folded them in half. Then my son spread glue on one side of a folded circle, and stuck it to another one. In this way he was able to build the seaweed up from the paper ... and then back down again.
It was a very simple effect to create, and the result was immediate, so he could see straight away what he would eventually achieve. This was important in keeping him motivated. When he doesn't know what he'll get at the end, I've found that he finds it more difficult to stick to the task!
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