Tag Archives: easy

Treetop Architects

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Design you own tree house complete with tire swing, water bucket, and stunning views of the verdant foliage. Best of all, it can be crafted with just about anything!

We read The Tree House that Jack Built, written by Bonnie Verburg and illustrated by Mark Teague (Orchard Books, 2014). Jack lives in a tree house with his animals friends who cavort and cause a bit of mischief throughout the day. But when it’s bedtime, everyone settles in for a peaceful night of moonlight and ocean waves. Raucous and then relaxing, this is an especially awesome bedtime story choice!

You’ll need:

  • An assortment of small boxes, toilet paper tubes, and paper towel tubes
  • 1 flat corrugated cardboard base (we used a 9.5″ x 13.5″ cake pad)
  • Green poster board
  • Scissors, glue and tape for construction
  • Markers for decorating
  • Hot glue

Building off your corrugated cardboard base, simply hot glue boxes, toilet paper, and paper towel tubes in whatever way works for you! We also offered natural craft sticks, wooden letters (leftover from this project), stickers, fabric flowers, and green paper crinkle for added texture. The results were fabulous!

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Note: the tire swing is a little snippet of foam pipe insulator you can get in the plumbing section of Lowe’s or Home Depot. It was definitely a big hit! And if you’re looking for a slightly more fantastical spin on this project, please see our fairy houses. Or at the very least, check out Katie’s hilarious real estate listings at the end of the post!

Digging Those Dinos

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It begins as a simple brown briefcase, but unfolds into a magnetized dino dig! No briefcase? No worries! This Katie-designed masterpiece can be replicated with any box top or cardboard surface.

We read One Hundred Bones by Yuval Zommer (Templar, 2016). Scruff is a messy but happy-go-lucky stray who loves to dig (much to the chagrin of the neighbors). But when he finds an enormous cache of bones, he rallies the other dogs to help unearth them. Some of these bones seem a little…unusual, so the gang goes to the Natural History Museum, where Professor Dinovsky is happy to receive their dino-tastic discovery AND adopt Scruff, digger extraordinaire!

You’ll need:

  • 1 flat piece of cardboard (ours was 10″ x 15″)
  • 1 flexible magnetic adhesive sheet (ours was 8″ x 10″)
  • 1 dino bones template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ brown construction paper
  • 1 dino bones template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ white card stock
  • 1 dino dig tools template, printed on 8.5″ x 11″ white card stock
  • Scissors, glue and tape for construction
  • Markers for decorating

In its most basic form, this is a magnetized board that you can match the also-magnetized bones to. So this project can be done with any flat piece of cardboard. First, trim a .5″ x 10″ strip off a 8″ x 10″ flexible magnetic sheet (which we purchased on Amazon). Set the strip aside, then stick the remaining sheet to the cardboard. Glue the dino bone template on top of the magnet sheet. In the below photo, you can see the black magnetic sheet peeking out from under the brown paper…

Now cut the dino bones from the template. Section the magnetic strip into pieces, then stick them onto the backs of the various bones. The bones will now connect to the dino template (and you can see we added a tissue paper border for extra fun)!

Scatter the bones through a room and have your little paleontologists discover, dig, and collect them up using the paper tools from this template!

We had the good fortune of scoring some flat cardboard boxes with flaps through this program, so we took the project to the next level by turning it into a fold out dig with envelope pockets for the bones and tools.

We added a string strap to turn in into a portable briefcase, complete with a wood bead and rubber band closure and dino prints stenciled on the outside!

We finished the entire project by handing out plastic pith helmets (purchased from Oriental Trading Company). As you can imagine, a dino-themed project went over VERY well. There’s always a dino shirt or two at story time, but we were delighted when one little girl arrived with a stunning purple dino bag…

And I can’t resist adding this photo of Katie snagging the above photo whilst being carefully supervised by the dino bag’s owner. So sweet!

Hop Along Li’l Bunny

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Do you have a case of the wiggles this winter? So does this little bunny! Press down on its head to watch it hop and bobble. Originally spotted on Instagram as an octopus, we re-imagined the project as a rabbit…and all it takes is 2 paper cups and some poster board!

We recommend reading Hop Little Bunnies (Bloomsbury, 2020), written by Martha Mumford and illustrated by Laura Hughes (read here by Kids & Company). The little bunnies are sleeping until noon, but when they wake, they traipse through barnyard, waking the other animals until it’s a cacophony of cheeps, meows, quacks, and so forth. Full of animal sounds, this one is sure to get the audience reading along with you! And for the musically inclined, you can try the singing version on the publisher’s official channel.

You’ll need:

  • 2 papers cups
  • White paper for rabbit ears
  • 2 strips of 1″ x 13″ poster board
  • Scissors and tape for construction
  • Markers for decorating

This project is essentially two cups stacked on top of one another with a paper spring in the middle. To begin, flip both cups upside down, then use markers to draw a face on the first cup. Add some paper ears (and an optional pom-pom nose if you desire!). Use scissors to cut bunny legs on the second cup.

Now for the paper spring! Take two, 1″ x 13″ strips of poster board and put them corner to corner at a 90 degree angle, like so…

Keeping the corners together, alternately fold each strip up towards you. Continue until the strips are completely folded into an accordion spring. Tape the end sections together for more stability.

Sometimes it’s easier to show then tell, so here’s Katie’s demonstrating her her awesome paper spring folding skills:

You can secure the spring to the bottom cup with tape or glue, or leave it loose for some extra wiggle. To finish, place the bunny head cup on top the body cup. Then press and release the bunny’s head to watch it bounce!

Original octopus project credit goes to strange_side_of_crafting on Instagram!