Bring on the bling! This glamorous feline is festooned with rhinestones, bangles, and brilliant bobbles. But that’s not all. She also has her own designer blanket, jewel-encrusted water dish, and solid gold mouse toy. Meow, indeed.
We read Glamourpuss, written by Sarah Weeks, and illustrated by David Small (Scholastic, 2015). Glamourpuss lives with Mr. and Mrs. Highhorsen. She has everything a cat could want – a diamond collar, attentive servants, a lavish private room, and total adulation from her owners. Then Mr. Highhorsen’s sister Eugenia visits with her pet chihuahua, Bluebelle. In addition to having a stunning array of outfits, Bluebelle can do tricks. Glamourpuss soon finds herself upstaged, and vows revenge. However, whilst stalking Bluebelle, Glamourpuss discovers that Bluebelle hates her outfits and tricks – she really dreams of simple elegance. Well. Glamourpuss can certainly help Bluebelle with that! They become close, and very glamorous, friends.
You’ll need:
- 1 large oatmeal container
- White construction paper
- White poster board
- A strip of gold poster board (approximately 1.5″ x 17″)
- 3 pieces of twisteez wire (approximately 7″ each)
- A small, rounded triangle of self-adhesive foam (approximately 1.25″ tall)
- A pair of wiggle eyes
- Cat jewelry & accessories (more on these later!)
- Scissors and tape for construction
- Markers for decorating
- Hot glue
Wrap the oatmeal container with white construction paper. Use extra paper to make the ears. Attach wiggle eyes with hot glue, then use a marker to add a smile (and maybe some eyelashes!). To make the nose and whiskers, curl the ends of 3 pieces of Twisteez wire, then bunch them in the middle and tape them to the container.
Peel and stick a triangle of self-adhesive foam over the tape.
To make the cat’s hind legs, cut a 4.25″ x 6.25″ rectangle of white poster board into the shape you see below. Hot glue it to the bottom of the oatmeal container.
The front legs are two, 1.75″ x 4.5″ rectangles of white poster board. Round the rectangles at both ends, then fold one end to create cat paws. Hot glue or tape the legs to the front of the container. And don’t forget to add a tail!
Now to fancy things up! We crafted paper bangs, a little gold poster board crown, and a gold poster board collar embellished with large gemstones. We also offered small gemstones, gold embossed foil paper, and gold star stickers. The final touch were self-adhesive rhinestone stickers Katie found in a discount bin after Easter
In a stroke of crafting genius, Katie cut one of the rhinestone flowers into little bits and gave the cat a fancy feline pedicure.
Your cat is finished, now for the accessories! The blanket is a 7″ x 11.5″ piece of fleece trimmed with gold tape. The water dish is a be-jeweled gold paper cup (cut down to 1.75″), with 2 blue cotton balls.
The gold mouse toy is a 2.25″ x 3.25″ rectangle of gold mirror board trimmed into a mouse shape. We added ears, a gold craft tie tail, a diamond nose, and finished with a pair of eyes drawn on with silver metallic Sharpie. Absolutely fah-bu-lous dahling!
The giraffe has a toilet paper tube body, and a 2″ long toilet paper tube head. Both of the tubes are wrapped with yellow construction paper. We used extra yellow construction paper to create the ears, antlers, and tail. Then we used markers to add the giraffe’s spots, mouth, and nostrils. We used 
The second hole is positioned underneath the first, on the opposite side of the tube.
If my description seems a little confusing, this next image should clear things up. Here’s the finished marionette head with the string running through the 2 holes you punched in the head tube.
Next, punch a hole at each end of the top of the body tube:
Then turn the tube over and punch 4 holes in the bottom. As you have probably guessed, these 4 holes are where the marionette’s legs attach in the next step.
To make the giraffe’s legs, thread a piece of string through a foam bead. Secure the string to the bottom of the foam bead with tape. Cut a drinking straw in half, then slide the 2 pieces down the string towards the foam bead. Thread the loose end of the string into the leg hole you punched in the body tube. Secure the string inside the tube with tape. Repeat these steps with the 3 remaining legs.
The lower part of the your puppet is done, now for the upper part! The puppet is attached to its drinking straw control stick by two strings. The first string runs from the control stick to the giraffe’s rear end, where it is secured inside the tube with tape. The second string runs through the head, the neck, and then attaches to the body tube with tape. The neck is a drinking straw cut into 3 pieces. We used black masking tape to secure the string to the control stick too.
Your marionette is done! We put on some tunes and invited kids to dance their giraffe friends. This resulted in some bouncy, twisty, bendy, jumpy dance moves, as well as a few bars of an original song we’re calling “Dancing, Dancing, Dance-a-lee-Dance!”
A monkey on a unicycle rolls down a ramp towards a snake. The bar holding the snake drops, which causes a bag of peanuts to fall into a container that sends a cart down a ramp into a tennis racket rigged to a mechanism that touches a match to a cannon fuse and fires an acrobat through a ring of fire!
Intended for ages 8 and up, Wonderology offers 6 different kits that cost between $10 – $20. Each kit contains a plethora of parts and a fully illustrated set of instructions. I purchased the Acrobat Challenge, the Garden Challenge, and the Speeding Car Challenge, then invited 3 kid testers (ages 6, 8, and 10) to try them out.
The kids were very excited as they unpacked the kits. The parts are fun, bright, and nice quality plastic. Here, for example, are the various pieces of the Acrobat Challenge:
Here are the kit’s illustrated instructions. They’re presented in classic Rube Goldberg format (they even use his special font!):
But as soon as construction started on the kits, well…that’s when things started to go wrong. Take the Acrobat Challenge, for example. In one part of the instructions, it clearly shows the yellow “monkey release” flag facing right. In two other sections of the instructions, it’s facing to the left! Also, either way I turned the flag, I never could get the monkey to work quite right.
There was a lot more of this I’m afraid – mechanisms not working like the instructions suggested, confusion with where to place the various pieces, the whole schbang toppling over when you tried to adjust it. Soon, there were shouts of frustration, explosive sounds of exasperation, creative G-rated cursing, and a box kicked across the floor (and it wasn’t just the kids doing all that).
But…see that chicken? It’s supposed to get a feather “plucked” from its tail, which causes it to lay an egg, which triggers the tennis racket, etc. But the egg just wouldn’t stay under the chicken. It just kept dropping and triggering the rest of the mechanism. So you had to skip the chicken all together, which is rather disappointing.
So that just leaves the Garden Challenge. This kit was particularly intriguing to me because it involves real water! Our 10 year-old tester managed to assemble it just fine.
But we soon discovered a fatal manufacturing flaw. See the orange gutter at the top of the mechanism? It’s supposed to tilt downward and let the 8 ball roll down and hit the watering can. But there was a little plastic piece that wouldn’t allow the gutter to tip down far enough! Katie had to saw the piece off with a box cutter in order to get it to finally work.
Then it was test, adjust, retest, adjust, curse quietly under one’s breath, test, adjust, and retest. It took dozens and dozens of attempts, close to an hour of concentration, and Katie’s sheer determination to get it to work. And yes, I did say work. Katie and the kid tester got it to work! Drumroll please…