{kid craft} Cats, Dogs and a Wolf

"Meow!" - "Meow?" - "MEOW!!!"

Apparently little brother is enjoying the result our weekly craft session: Cardboard tube cats. We also made two dogs and a wolf, but basically any creature with pointy ears will work here.

We used cardboard tubes from kitchen towels - I have messy kids, so we had to look no further than the recycling bin. Of course, toilet paper tubes work perfectly, too. Then all you do is press both sides of one end in so you end up with a dent in the tube and ears for your cat. Or dog. Or wolf.

It's so simple I didn't even take pictures of the process, but there are many good tutorials out there. Mostly for owls like this one or this fancy one and another fancy one from Rebecca. So basically you can do anything from simply drawing faces on them to painting them and adding squiggly eyes, wings or glitter.

Next time, I guess. I always forget to get simple craft paints, I think I have to stock up on crafty basics here... Although I would have had glitter and squiggly eyes. Oh well.

I did a few just to get started and then had the brothers draw faces on them, which to my surprise even little brother managed quite well. The only reason we stopped was that there were no more tubes in our recycling bin!

Now, of course I could have been prepared and collected toilet paper rolls and bought paint. Except that we set out that afternoon to do something completely different. We were going to work on daddy's birthday present. Well, actually we did work on it. I obviously can't tell you what it is (hi, honey!), but the basis was going to be a hand drawn grid for the boys to color in.

Yeah, well. Little brother can't really color in the lines yet but he had fun telling me which color to put where. It was a good practice for big brother, who's about as good at drawing as mommy is. Oh well.

We also don't usually use markers. I have chairs with a white slipcover. And light colored walls. Need I say more? So we usually use crayons or colored pencils. But yesterday the markers came out and the boys had fun.

Not sure I'll use the results for daddy's present, but I'm trying to be positive about it and just see it as having fun experimenting and practicing crafts. Little brother didn't nap and looks like he's falling asleep right there at the table. But actually, although they had been sitting at the table quite a while drawing and painting, and big brother had also been doing the rest of his weekly homework, they still wanted more. That's when I remembered the toilet paper cats and started rummaging through the recycling bin.

Cat

Wolf

Another cat

So that's how we ended up doing the toilet paper zoo. Well, more like a litter of cats with two dogs and a wolf. Big brother was so proud that he actually took one of them to preschool today to show around.

So let's see, what else has pointy ears...

Happy crafting,

Swenja