Thursday, July 4, 2013

American Flag and Fireworks



It was too buggy and muggy to play outside, so I figured I'd burn off some of the crazy energy by sitting down for a craft. My three year old recently expressed interest in cutting paper and using scissors, so I figured that today was as good as any to give it a shot.

For the American Flag project, you'll need: plain white paper, blue and red construction paper, glue sticks and safety scissors.

I did most of the cutting and pre-cut out the red stripes for the American flag, the white stars, and the blue rectangle. You'll notice that the construction paper is longer than regular plain paper- that's when I gave Hank the opportunity to cut.

I showed the boys how to glue on the blue rectangle in the top corner, and how we were going to make stripes that matched an actual flag I had on the table. They noticed the pattern of Red, White, Red, White which made the process a bit easier.

Henrik noticed that the red stripes were too long when it came time to attach them, and that's when I used a marker to draw a line on the Red Stripes where he could cut so that they would fit on his flag. He got so excited with the scissors and cut most of the stripes in half. Oh well! It's not about making a perfect replica!

 


Once the cutting was done, I showed them how to put glue on the stripes so they could stick them on the white paper. It didn't work that well, instead, I decided that we should just cover the entire white piece of paper in glue. It got pretty messy.

When we were all covered in glue and paper, we added the stars. The boys were pretty amazed that they were able to make their own flag to wave around. You could probably attach the flag to something for them to wave it, but we stuck ours on the cabinets. Theo needed a lot of help with the stripes but was able to do the stars by himself. I covered the whole blue rectangle in glue so it would be easier for him, and he loved it.

 For the Firework Project, you'll need: Black or Brown Construction paper, Construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, and stickers. I took a bunch of different colors from the construction paper pack and pre-cut very thin strips of paper, like, half a centimeter. I did this several times until I had a rat's nest of stringed confetti paper for the boys to glue.

We then covered the whole piece of brown (I didn't have any black left) construction paper in glue. I then let the boys go. They got pretty fancy with it and instead of laying each piece on the paper, they layered and curled the strips so that the fireworks popped off the page! I thought they looked great!

We then added some star stickers to any space that was left empty, just to add a little flare, and fireworks happen at night so we were probably going to see some stars.

 






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