Straw Airplane

The other day my daughter, Raya, enjoyed watching a piece of paper blow away from the wind of a fan, so I thought how much more fun would it be to play with a paper airplane?? This paper airplane design is much simpler to make for a preschooler than the traditional paper airplane and it flies just as well! 

Here's instructions on how to make a straw airplane. 

Supplies Needed:
- paper
- scissors
- paint / markers / stickers
- straw

Cut two strips of paper 1" in width. The first strip should be 10" long and the second strip 5" long. 

Decorate them anyway you like! My daughter loves to paint so she painted hers, but you can colour and/or add stickers as well. 

Then tape the ends of each strip together to create a circle.

Once both circles are made, use a piece of tape to secure the end of the straw to the large circle. Repeat this step for the small circle, securing it to the opposite end of the straw. 

Ready for take off!

Coffee Filter Flowers

We tried another coffee filter craft and this one was a big hit with my 3-year-old! (If you haven't seen the previous coffee filter craft we did, click here)

Coffee Filter Flowers

Supplies Needed: 

- 2 to 4 coffee filters (the more coffee filters you use, the fuller the flower will be)
- washable markers
- paint brush
- pipe cleaner

Just like the previous coffee filter craft, my daughter drew different designs on each coffee filter and then used a paint brush and water to lightly paint and drop water onto each coffee filter, allowing the colours to blend and bleed into each other. We let them dry and ended up with a small stack of coffee filters in beautiful colours! 

Next comes the folding. Keep the coffee filters stacked on top of each other as seen in the photo above. See the following steps on how to fold:

Step 1: Fold in half.                          
       















Step 2: Fold in half again.

Step 3: Fold one side back, flip over and fold the other side back. It will look like this when done:

Wrap a pipe cleaner around the tip of the flower as shown below:

And here comes the fun part. Spread out each of the coffee filters to let your flower bloom! 

My daughter made a few of these and put them in a vase to create a beautiful bouquet. 

Coffee Filter Butterfly

Our crafting time this summer has been limited due to visiting with family and friends, attending events around town,  and enjoying the outdoors when it hasn't been smoky (the BC forest fires have been the worst this year!). But I still fit the occasional craft in on days we have nothing planned. 

I have a pile of coffee filters (bought at the dollar store) and so I thought it would be fun to try out a couple of crafts with them. 

The first craft we made was a butterfly.

Supplies Needed:

- 2 coffee filters
- washable markers
- paint brush
- clothespin
- paint
- pipe cleaner

Step 1: Draw a design on each coffee filter with different coloured markers. 

Step 2: Use a paint brush to drop water droplets onto the coffee filters (This was my daughter's favourite part - so fun to watch the colours blend together!).

Tip: Put the coffee filters on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper so that the colours can bleed through onto the wax paper. Just simply throw the piece of wax paper away when you're done - less mess! 

Place each coffee filter onto a piece of paper towel for them to dry. 

Step 3: Paint the clothespin and draw eyes on it with a black marker. (My daughter also drew a mouth :) )

Step 4: Open the clothespin and wrap a pipe cleaner around the back part of the clothespin to create the antenna for the butterfly.

Step 5: Fold each coffee filter into an accordion and clip the clothespin in the middle of each. Spread out the accordion fold to create 4 wings. 

And here you have a beautiful butterfly!