{kid craft} Food chain animals

What a busy week! I had off from work so I tackled as many bigger projects on my list as I could. By Friday, I was exhausted. I figured I'll go pick up the kids early and have a quiet afternoon.

When I arrived at the preschool, big brother was discussing plans for a shadow play with his teacher. Apparently not thinking clearly, I mentioned this idea I had seen for making big fish that eat little fish (right here on the Babyccino blog).

From then on all the way home, while eating lunch, cleaning up and trying to start the bread for dinner, big brother kept saying the same thing over and over and over again: "Mommy, can we make those fish, please? Now? Mommy, please?".

Sure. Just let mommy grab a cup of coffee.

These are really simple actually. As simple as crafting with two little kids is, especially if one of them is getting off naps, there's dough rising in the kitchen and you're trying to take pictures at the same time.

We started with fish, but we also did a cat and mouse and a chicken with a worm. Basically this works with every animal eating another one, hence the food chain. So here's what you'll need:

• thicker paper or card stock (we used colored but if you do these for shadow play only you can use things from your recycling bin like cereal boxes)
• wooden clothes pins
• toothpicks or wooden skewers 
• scissors
• glue
• crayons or pencils
• optional embellishments like wiggly eyes, feathers and the like

Start by drawing animals, marking a line from their mouth (don't forget the teeth!) all the way through. This is where you will cut them later. The animals should be looking sideways.

Big brother makes a piranha.

Cut them out, but don't cut along that line just yet.

Color if you feel like it.

Add some eyes. This is little brother's favorite part.

Now cut along the line and glue each half to one part of the clothespin. We ended up with some animals where we glued only the back part (too many teeth in this case) and some we glued on all the way. Didn't really make much of a difference in the end.

Now you have your big fish.

Piranhas. Look at those teeth!

Draw the little animal or bottom of the food chain.

Again, cut out and embellish.

Glue a toothpick to the back.

Secure with some more paper (remember, I have boys).

Here's your little fish. Watch out...

 ... there's a big fish coming!

It also works nicely as a shadow play. The original reason for doing these. Luckily we had the sun shining through the dining room windows so we could try it out.

Another big fish.

And a chicken!

We could have made quite a few more actually, but it was time to make that bread and start dinner. Next time. We might even get all fancy and add moving arms and such. So, what creatures are you going to make?

Have a good weekend,

Swenja