Tired and ready to jump into bed? You might have some competition. Can you toss the bear, chipmunk, groundhog, raccoon, porcupine, AND yourself safely into the bed?
We read William’s Winter Nap, written by Linda Ashman, and illustrated by Chuck Groenink (Disney Hyperion, 2017). It’s a cold winter night, and William is getting ready for bedtime. He’s constantly interrupted, however, by woodland creatures who all want to climb in bed for a snooze too! William is cheerfully accommodating – until an enormous bear arrives at the door. Is there room for one more? Of course!
You’ll need:
- 1 large box (ours was 4.5” X 4.5” x 9” box – a large tissue box works too)
- 6 toilet paper tubes
- 1 packing tape core
- Construction paper
- Scissors and tape for construction
- Markers for decorating
We’ll begin with the bed! We cut the lid off a brown craft box and used it to create the bed’s head board and foot board. The pillow is a toilet paper tube, and the blanket is a piece of white construction paper. Decorate everything with markers. We also added foil star stickers, and added 4 pom-pom feet to the bed, but these items are optional.
The bed’s occupants are toilet paper tubes (the chipmunk is a 2″ snippet of tube). The bear, however, is a packing tape core. We used construction paper and markers to decorate them, as well as eye stickers and dot stickers.
To play the game, simply set the bed up, move back a few paces, and let the tubes fly! The big bear is especially fun to toss, as he/she is prone to sending the other tubes bouncing out of the bed and into the air!
We recommend Rub-a-Dub Sub, written by Linda Ashman, and illustrated by Jeff Mack (Harcourt, 2003). Zooming around in an orange submarine, a little boy encounters numerous ocean creatures – a seal, a manta ray, a horseshoe crab, and an eel to name a few! But an encounter with an enormous shark forces him to quickly retrace his steps to the surface, where he finds himself safe and sound – in his very own bathtub.
Next, turn the cups end-to-end and connect them together with hot glue. If you can’t do hot glue, simply connect the cups with tape. We used black masking tape for the photo below, but regular tape works just as well.
For the paper towel tube version of the project, cut the holes in the bottoms of the cups. Then place a piece of paper towel tube inside the bottom cup (our tube piece was 6.75″ long but you might have to adjust yours a little). Place the second cup over top of the first…
Then hot glue (or tape) the two cups together. So…is the extra effort for the paper towel version worth it? You decide! Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the 2 projects. One could argue that the paper towel tube version looks more like a spyglass, but the cups-only version is cute too.
Next, cut a periscope shape out of construction paper, tab the bottom, and attach the periscope to the top of the sub. Finally, use markers to give your sub portholes, plates, rivets, and bolts. Any markers will do, but we really liked how silver metallic marker looked on the black paper cups.
Miss Marissa designed this awesome project, and she made a fantastic I-Spy game to go with it! To play, print up the characters in this template (click 