Coconut Craft and Turkey Painting

For about a week, Laurel told me she wanted to do a coconut craft.  I'm glad that she makes special requests for crafts, but this seemed strange to me.  Why coconuts?  She watched a Dora episode lately where Benny the Bull is on an island with a bunch of coconut trees, and he had to dance out of the way of the falling coconuts, and I think that she wanted something based on that idea.

When I searched for "coconut crafts" on Pinterest I came up with pretty much nothing.  I really tried to think of a way to make something where the coconuts fell out of the tree, but didn't come up with something that wouldn't make a big mess.  So I waited until we finished a roll of toilet paper, then told Laurel it was time for her coconut craft!

I cut slices off the edge of some paper plates, and had the kids color them with crayons.  Then I cut a bunch of flaps on the bottom so they would be like palm tree fronds.

We used a brown tissue paper for the coconuts.  I had Laurel crumple little squares into balls.

Then I used the hot glue gun to glue my paper plate palm fronds into the toilet paper roll.  I then glued the tissue paper coconut on, and voila!  We have a coconut tree!

Last week I put together a craft for my kids as well as the kids I watch in the afternoon.  I don't have any pictures of us actually doing the craft, because it involved 5 paper plates with paint all over them, and 4 kids under the age of 3 doing the craft at once, I did not feel safe backing away from the table for even one second to take a picture.

I had Laurel help me put names on the top of card stock with foam letters.  This was also good alphabet practice for her (she can identify pretty much all the letters now) and good fine motor skill training, as she peeled the paper off the backs and stuck them to the paper by herself.

Once the kids were all awake and ready, I put 5 different colors of craft paint on to 5 paper plates.  Then one kid at a time, I helped them put their palm into the paint and then stick it on the paper with each color.  This was supposed to be the tail feathers of a turkey.  In the process I discovered that Nicolas really freaks out when he has paint all over his hand.

I let the paint dry overnight, then the next afternoon had each kid put a brown hand print upside down in the middle of the paper to be the turkey's legs and head.  After the babysitting kids left, I painted a beak, legs, and that thing that hangs down (ok, I had to google it.  The part hanging from the next is called a "wattle" and the part hanging from the beak is called a "snood").