Settle down Southwestern critters! As the moon rises over the cacti in this lovely construction paper landscape, it’s time for the birds, animals, and reptiles to find their special spots. Turn off the lights, and your moon and stars glow in the dark!
We read Bedtime in the Southwest by Mona Hodgson, illustrated by Renée Graef (Rising Moon, 2004). Twilight has come to the Southwest, and it’s time to go to bed. But is everyone ready? The little hare is hopping on his bed, the skunk appears to be ignoring Mama, and the porcupine is poking quills in his pillow in protest. But eventually, everyone scoots, snuggles, and nestles down to sleep.
You’ll need:
- A large, flat piece of corrugated cardboard (ours was 22″ x 25″)
- Dark blue poster board
- Orange poster board
- Brown, green, white, and gray construction paper
- Several pieces of green self-adhesive foam for cacti (optional)
- A southwest critter template color printed on 8.5″ x 11″ white card stock
- Scissors, glue and tape for construction
This project was a step-by-step endeavor, as opposed to our more go-crazy-with-the-supplies-and do-anything-you-want projects (here’s looking at you, Roy). And while crazy art is fun, there’s also something soothing about methodical projects. That was definitely true of this project. It was very mellow. We even removed all the tables and chairs and worked in a big, relaxed circle.
We also prepped all the project items in advance, so it would be easier for the entire group to progress through the project together.
First, the backdrop boards! Glue a 7.5″ x 22″ piece of dark blue poster board to the top of the backdrop board. Then, cut mountain ridges in the top of a similarly-sized piece of orange poster board, overlap it a little with the blue poster board, and glue it in place. Glue a white card stock moon and stars to the night sky. Next up, your critter habitats!
But first, a word about the little pockets each critter gets tucked into. We had a ton of old archival mylar lying around, so we used that to create clear pockets. Overhead projector transparency sheets work too. But you can opt for non-transparent pockets and use good old construction paper. Also, your pockets needs a little wiggle room at the top for sliding the critters in and out. So leave 0.75″ of the pocket un-taped.
As you can see, the pronghorn habitat is a small bump of brown construction paper with a pocket taped in front of it. Super easy! The coyote habitat is 3 brown dirt mounds, one cut to look like the entrance to a burrow. The pocket is taped behind one of the mounds.
The roadrunner habitat is a big spiky green bush with a little construction paper nest in front of it (the pocket is under the nest). Then we we then covered the nest with (optional) brown raffia pieces.
The gila monster habitat is 4 gray rocks, with the pocket behind 3 overlapping rocks.
For the hummingbird habitat, cut a branched tree trunk out of brown construction paper, then tape the pocket over a fork in one of the branches. Cut a tree canopy with a big hole in it, then glue it over the top of the tree trunk and the pocket, leaving plenty of room to slide the hummingbird in and out. The hare habitat is at the bottom of the tree. It’s a pocket covered by a fringed 6″ piece of green crepe paper (or just use construction paper).
Finally, the elf owl. Did you know that elf owls live in cacti? We wanted to capture that awesomeness, so Katie painstakingly cut holes in 2 dozen cacti. Tape the owl’s pocket directly to the board, slide the owl in the pocket, and then position the hole in the cactus directly over the owl’s face.
Because you need to retrieve your owl, you only want to attach the bottom section of the cactus to the board. We used self-adhesive foam for our cacti, and solved the problem by leaving the paper backing on the top part of the cactus, but peeling and sticking the rest:
We used self-adhesive foam for all our cacti. It gave them a terrific texture, and it was fun for the kids to peel and stick them wherever they wanted. But construction paper works too! At the very bottom of our background boards was a long mylar pocket to store the animals when they’re not tucked into their habitats. We slid some cool Southwestern patterned paper into the pocket too.
You might have noticed that we kept the names of the critters on our template cut outs. I also broke from tradition and presented them to the kids already colored in. That’s because we wanted the kids to see what the various Southwestern critters looked like, and to learn their names. However, if you’d like the same template in black & white, here it is!
The very last thing Katie and I did was go around with a bit of glow-in-the-dark paint and fill in their moon and stars. We also added optional shooting stars (by painting glowing lines behind one of the stars on the board).
And that’s it! I like to think that, later that night, little Southwestern landscapes were glowing softly across town as kids tucked the animals in and went to sleep. Goodnight, sweet Southwest.
You will find the instructions for the shield in 
Next came the helmets! Gentle lords and ladies, I found the most amazing DIY knight helmet at the blog Meaningful Mama. Jodi Durr, genius crafter, made one out of a jumbo popcorn bucket!
The instructions for Jodi’s helmet are 
Our jumbo popcorn buckets were 8.5″ tall and the mouths were 7.5″ in diameter. Even so, many didn’t slide easily over the kids’ heads. No problem! To make more room, cut a strip out of the back of the bucket until it fits. Here, for example what the back of my helmet looked like:
I’d like to send a big shout out to the 
All you need now are some kisses to catch! Given visor visibility and catching abilities, we wanted ours to be fairly large and substantial. We stuck gold 
Now for the best part. Marissa is the proud owner of not one, but two dinosaur onesies. Ever since she sported one at 
When they caught us, we tossed a kiss in their net!
It allowed me to see those beautiful smiles when the kiss was caught!
Also! The PVC won’t curve gracefully (you need a heat gun for that). But it will bend into 3 sections that approximate a curve. Once the PVC is bent, wrap it with color masking tape. Hot glue a button magnet on one end of the pipe, then push the non-magnet end through the X in the lid of the box.
Leaving plenty of room around the X, decorate the cup with patterned tape and/or color masking tape (or just markers). Then push the neck of the lamp through the X. Your lamp will now look like this:
To make the cord, snap a mini craft stick in two, then place the pieces on the back of a 1.25″ x 1.5″ rectangle of self-adhesive foam. Place a pipe cleaner at the bottom the the rectangle as well, then press a matching rectangle of self-adhesive foam on top. Trim the sides down into a plug shape, then tape the plug to the bottom of the lamp’s base.
Finally, the light bulb! We wanted these lamps to shed light, but we didn’t want to mess with…oh…electricity. We also wanted kids to be able to switch the lamps on and off. LED votive candles flickered too much, and glow sticks eventually fade. But then I found these submersible LED lights in the floral section of Michaels Craft!
To turn the light on, you simply twist the clear dome clockwise. The LEDS also come in different colors! Woo! However, a pack of 12 costs $20, so make sure you go armed with a 40% coupon. We hot glued a button magnet to the back of each LED light, then connected it with the magnet at the end of the PVC pipe neck. Here’s a shot of the two connected pieces inside the lamp’s shade:
To operate the lamp, simply reach inside the shade, disconnect the magnets, and twist the LED light on. Then reconnected the illuminated LED to the magnet inside the lamp. Kids didn’t even need to peer inside the lampshade to do this – the magnets found each other quite easily.