Tag Archives: craft

Go a Little Wild!

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Yes, there’s a time and place for proper behavior, but what happens when a tiger wants to go a little…wild?

We read Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown (Little, Brown, 2013, read here by Glasgow’s Improvement Challenge) Mr. Tiger is feeling stifled in the city with its mundane homes, drab clothing, and polite conversations. So he tries something different. He (gasp!) drops on all fours. This begins a chain of experiences that ultimately ends with Mr. Tiger running around the wilderness in just his stripes. But it’s lonely being on your own. Can Mr. Tiger’s friends maybe change a little bit and join him? Because sometimes, a little wild is a good thing!

In keeping with Mr. Tiger’s duel lives, this project begins with his house in the city…

Then rotate the box to visit the wilderness on the other side!

You’ll need:

  • One 4.5” X 4.5” x 9” craft box (a large tissue box works too)
  • 1 smaller box for the interior
  • Green and brown poster board
  • Construction paper
  • 1 toilet paper tube
  • 1 tiger house template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ card stock
  • Scissors, glue, and tape for construction
  • Markers for decorating

Begin by cutting the top off the large box, as well as two windows on opposing sides. Next, glue a smaller box inside so your toilet paper tube tiger can peep out of the windows. Finally, use poster board and construction paper to decorate the city and wilderness sides! For added wilderness texture, we offered kids fabric flowers, green tissue paper, crepe paper streamers, and paper crinkle. The results were AWESOME!

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We do, however, want to give a special nod to the creative individual who decided to put a hobbit door on Mr. Tiger’s city abode…

Next, use construction paper and markers to decorate a toilet paper tube like a tiger. Also, since clothing plays an important role in the book, we taped a little top hat to the top of the city window, and a little Hawaiian shirt to the bottom of the wilderness window.

There’s funny dialogue in the book, so we added speech bubbles on the tiger house template, as well as directions signs for the blank sides of the box!

We absolutely LOVE Peter Brown’s work…check out Creepy Carrots, this illuminating underwear, a growing garden, and a visit to Peter’s studio!

Wait ‘Til the Midnight Hour

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It may be midnight, but there’s always time to explore this awesome little 2D library, and possibly discover a hidden letter or two!

We recommend reading The Midnight Library by Kazuno Kohara (Roaring Book Press, 2014, read here by the Ingleside Public Library). Welcome to a very special library: it’s only open from midnight to dawn! The little librarian, along with her three assistant owls, work together in the dark and help the forest animals find a place to play music, read the perfect story time book, and even sign up for a library card!

You’ll need:

  • 1 midnight library template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ paper
  • 1 clear piece of 8.5″ x 11″ plastic (more on this below!)
  • Sharpie permanent marker
  • 1 piece of black construction paper
  • One flashlight template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ card stock
  • Scissors for construction
  • Markers for decorating
  • Optional: fine tip dry erase marker

Begin by printing the midnight library template. Then, place a piece of plastic on top of the template and trace it using a Sharpie permanent marker. We used archival mylar, but you can also use the clear cellophane rolls you find in the gift basket section of your local craft store!

Replace the paper library template with a piece of black construction paper. Tape the corners of the black construction paper to a tabletop, then tape the corners of the plastic to the tabletop as well. Really to explore the library? Slide the flashlight’s light beam between the construction paper and plastic to “illuminate” the scene!

Want to take the project up a notch? Use a fine tip dry erase marker on the plastic to “hide” letters in the library, and ask your young readers to locate them. Once all the letters have been discovered, you can erase them and start anew! You can make the letters random, or ask kids to string together various words and/or messages. For example, I’ve hidden the word “hello” on this shelf…can you find it?

The Tiny Library Challenge, Round II

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bear books kit 4Readers might recall the miniature library kit that almost drove Katie to the edge of sanity in 2021. It took 12 months, 46 hours and countless grey hairs, but Katie finally completed it! Fast forward to 2022, and the discovery of the Mind-Find Bookstore kit by Rolife Hands Craft. How can we resist, right? This bookstore has a BEAR in it!  So we decided to test the kit…except…now it’s MY turn to feel the agony and ecstacy of miniature building.

The Rolife kit is nicely packaged, and retails for around $20 on Amazon and Target. It is intended for ages 14 and up. That age range is absolutely correct. You need a steady hand and lots of patience to build it. I slowly unpackaged everything, wondering what I had gotten myself into. In the background, Katie chuckled evily.

One thing I liked about the kit was that you could lay the pieces on the paper templates, matching up the numbers with the instructions. This allowed me to have everything in one place, without having to stop and hunt for pieces during the process. Fair warning: the print on the instructions is miniscule, and there’s a bunch of tiny little paper signs to cut out too. I used regular-sized scissors and fumbled through, but smaller craft scissors would have produced cleaner cuts for sure.

One thing I did NOT like about the kit was the glue. The nozzle was always gushing, which endangered the fragile pieces. I finally resorted to using a paperclip to brush the glue on all the teeny weeny surfaces.

The kit also comes with a pair of plastic tweezers. I definitely had to use them! Not just for construction, but also setting up the interior of the shop. It was quite the adventure, folding the little bags, gluing the little handles on, and then navigating each of them on to the little slippery pegs!

There were a couple different types of books to construct as well. Some were just paper covers glued to foam pieces. Others were books you could actually open and turn the pages. Nice!

The advertised completion time for the kit is 3.5 hours. Well, it took me 5 hours and lots of complaining, squinting, moaning, and muttering quiet curses. At one point, I sent Katie a photo of my messy progress and bemoaned how crazy the kit was making me. She simply sent back this:

Like the kit Katie assembled, this little bookstore can be wired for lights. Buuuuuut I couldn’t figure out the “heat tube” part of the instructions, annnnnnd the little lightbox broke during construction. So I had to jerry-rig the bulb to the battery like some sort of miniature MacGyver. But in the end, there was LIGHT!

I would say the Mind-Find Bookstore kit by Rolife Hands Craft is mid-range in difficulty. If you are working on this with a kid, plan for lots of extra time and patience as most of the pieces are from scratch, the paper signs are small, and the instructions are a little vague. Ultimately, the results were cute, and this cheerful little bookstore will brighten any room or shelf!