Related pages: Truffula Trees craft, The Lorax activities, Dr. Seuss Activities

Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat Craft

Cat in the Hat Finger Puppets Materials

I’ve placed a photograph next to each finger puppet with the exact materials needed for each finger puppet. All of them require a very easy to find set of stuff:

Pipe Cleaners

Pom Poms

Googly Eyes

Glue (Hot glue gun works best, but I’ve since discovered that even regular glue will suffice, it just takes longer to dry)

Wire Cutters (So you don’t ruin your scissors cutting the pipe cleaners)

Also, to make the Cat in the Hat’s whiskers, you need a small 3 inch piece of black thread

General Finger Puppet Craft Instructions

Please refer to the original Easter finger puppets post for general assembly instructions.

It explains how to wind the pipe cleaners around your finger and how to attach the pom poms accurately.

Cat in the Hat Finger Puppet

Cat in the Hat Finger Puppet Craft

For the Cat in the Hat, you’ll need 2 red pipe cleaners, one white, and two black (the black used together to make the finger puppet base). Plus a 4 inch black piece bent as shown to make the arms.

First, wind the puppet base with the two black pipe cleaners.

Then make the Cat in the Hat hat (say that three times fast!):

Pipe Cleaner Seuss Hat

First you’ll wind a red and white pipe cleaner around your finger to make the top, then after three turns, start winding them together to make the brim. The wire is so easy to work with and so forgiving, don’t worry if it seems to come out all wonky – it’s super easy to fix into whatever shape you want. To make the top of the hat, simply coil the top pipe cleaner piece a little smaller as shown in the last photo in the series above.

Glue the hat to the white pom pom.

Bend two small black pieces of pipe cleaner as shown for ears, and glue them to the sides of the head just below the hat.

Cut the thread into two 1 1/2 inch pieces, and glue them to the back of the tiny black nose pom pom. This is a little tricky because both are so small – younger children might need help with this part.

Glue the nose to the middle of the front of the cat face.

Glue the googly eyes right above the nose.

Glue the head to the puppet base.

Slide the cat’s arms in between the coils of the puppet base body.

Tie a ‘bow’ with a red pipe cleaner around the neck, and use your wire cutters to trim the extra length of the ends off.

Thing One and Thing Two Finger Puppets

Thing One and Thing Two Finger Puppets Craft

The materials shown will make both of these puppets – 4 red pipe cleaners plus two sets of arms bent as shown, two 2 inch pieces of white pipe cleaners, two white pom poms, one turquoise pom pom, 4 googly eyes, two tiny light blue pom poms.

Wind the puppet base with two red pipe cleaners coiled together.

Find the middle of the blue pom pom and snip it in half with your wire clippers or scissors:

Thing One and Thing Two Hair

Pull them apart very carefully so that the two sides stay intact. Quickly put a LOT of glue onto the blue hair and get it on top of the white pom pom head – otherwise the fuzzies will fly everywhere and make your nose itch.

Glue the nose onto the face and the googly eyes on top of the nose.

Slide the arms in between the coils of the puppet base body.

Coil the small white pipe cleaner into a tiny circle, and glue it to the front of the puppet body

Glue the head to the puppet body.

More Finger Puppet Crafts

Easter finger puppets

Halloween finger puppets – and more of them

Thanksgiving finger puppets

Alien finger puppets

I typically like to do more sewing and clothing crafts & projects in warmer months. Summer clothes are just way more fun to make. And t-shirt refashions are one of those things that amaze me with the sheer brilliance of my fellow craft bloggers. How they come up with all of these amazing ideas is really beyond me. Every time I cut up a tshirt I end up not liking it so much and it becomes sleepwear. But I would totally wear some of these refashioned tshirt ideas any day!

Related pages: Teen Crafts, Recycled Crafts, Winter Crafts

More Cut Up T-Shirt Designs

For more t-shirt surgery brilliance, check out the T-Shirt Surgery Flickr Pool, and the 99 Ways to Cut, Sew, Trim, and Tie Your T-Shirt into Something Special and Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-Shirt books on Amazon!

Thankfully I was browsing through some old files today and came across my cute Christmas pinwheel craft from last year, and it was a super-easy update to do more with a spring / summer theme – so here they are!

Color Mosaic Pinwheel	Color Your Own Pinwheel	Colorful Sunflower Pinwheel
Retro Orange Wallpaper Pinwheel	Retro Green Design Pinwheel	Polka Dot Pinwheel
Color Blocks Pinwheel	Camouflage Pinwheel	Pastel Sunburst Pinwheel
Pink Watercolor Pinwheel	Ocean Print Pinwheel	Candy Dots Pinwheel

Check out more paper crafts like these easy origami kites, tissue paper flowers, or even these Pokemon paper crafts and coloring pages!

10 Plant Life Cycle Lesson Plan Activity Ideas

1 – Print out the color or b/w squares below twice to make a matching game.

2 – Plant seeds in newspaper seedling pots.

3 – Have children collect seeds from everyday foods to bring into the classroom for identification.

4 – Grow a Chia Pet (which has blossomed into a whole brand line of Chia turtles, dinosaurs, ‘Donkey’ from Shrek and even Obama heads).

5 – Sprout an avocado seed.

6 – Use the words in the word search as spelling or vocabulary words for the week.

7 – Plant a tree in the school yard, local park, or other organization.

8 – Our school does their planting activities early in the year, and then lets the children take their full grown plants home as a Mother’s Day gift in May.

9 – Take a field trip to a local greenhouse, or ask your local greenhouse if they would be willing to send in a person to do a presentation for the school.

10 – Play Garden – Opoly!

Plant Life Worksheets

How Do Plants Grow Color Sequence

How Do Plants Grow Sequence Coloring Page

How Do Plants Grow Color Sequence Worksheet

How Do Plants Grow Word Search

Plant Life Quizzes on Classroom Jr.

How Do Plants Grow Printable Mini Book

Use this mini book for younger children who are able to color the pictures, cut apart the pages, and assemble them into a book. Staple the pages together, or punch holes and tie string as a book binding.

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 1-2

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 3-4

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 5-6

How Do Plants Grow Mini Book pg 7-8

Blank How Do Plants Grow Printable Mini Book

Use this mini book for older children who have the skills to construct their own sentences. They can describe what is in the pictures and use the vocabulary words from the word search above.

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 1-2

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 3-4

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 5-6

How Do Plants Grow Blank Book pg 7-8

Check out all of our spring activities, Earth Day activities and other garden crafts while you are here!

As I ate lunch from the freezer last week, I was left with a little black plastic tray that I would normally toss in the trash. But I had a feeling I could turn it into something cool, so I washed it out and held onto it until inspiration hit me – and it did when I saw my grandmother’s pillbox hat:

Since it’s Earth Day this week, this is the first in a series of recycled crafts. Woot!

Check out all Woo! Jr. Network Earth Day crafts, printables and coloring pages here.

What You Need to Make this Pillbox Hat Recycled Craft

Here’s my rather simple materials list  (not everything is pictured above)

• A black single serving microwave dinner tray (washed!)
• Green ribbon (I bought this green ribbon from the scrap heap at my local craft store for less than $1). I prefer wired ribbon for this project so that the bow (pictured below) holds its shape.
• A 14″ inch square of black tulle (you could get uber-recyclely geeky and use the netting from a produce bag instead, but I didn’t have any in black)
• A thin and stretchy elastic hair headband (for the full head, not a pony tail holder)
• A safety pin
• Tissue paper and pipe cleaners to make your tissue paper flowers
• Wire cutters
• Glue gun

How to Make this Pillbox Hat Recycled Craft

First you need to make your flowers (tissue paper flowers instructions here). I made mostly small flowers with some larger flowers as accent pieces. As pictured in the materials section, I made:

• 8 mini pink flowers from 1 inch squares of tissue paper
• 7 small yellow flowers from 1 1/2 inch squares of tissue paper
• 3 small accent flowers from darker colored multi-colored tissue paper (and the brown pipe cleaner centers on these made them look really striking!)
• 2 medium multi-colored flowers using yellow and white tissue paper, varying from 1 inch to three inches
• 1 large ‘centerpiece’ flower using 4 inch pieces of tissue paper. I spent a bit more time and creativity on this flower, using extra ribbon as additional leaves and cutting more intricate petals out of the tissue paper

Your microwave dinner tray may vary in size from mine, so you may need more or less flowers than this.

Also, make your accent bow with about 15 inches of ribbon and one of the small accent flowers. Simply tie the bow like you would tie your shoes, make it symmetrical and pretty, and then snip off the ends with a diagonal cut. Then I just used the pipe cleaner end of the flower to wrap it around the center of the bow and secure it into place.

Make the Hat Veil 2

Make the Hat Veil 3

Tissue Paper Flower Arrangement

To make the veil, grab the left corner of the square of tulle and bring it up to the top corner. Do the same with the right corner, and then you’ll have two ‘flaps’ (seen on the far left of the first photo) sticking out. Bring those two flaps in to the top corner so that all the visible corners of the tulle square are together (see picture two). Safety pin the corners together. Now, cut off the last corner in a rounded fashion like in the last photo.

At this point I highly recommend doing a ‘trial run’ and arranging your flowers on top of the hat to determine where you want them before you glue them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done some craft ‘on the fly’ and then wished I hadn’t glued everything in place.

Once you know where you want your flowers, you can rev up your glue gun and start gluing! Glue down a layer of ribbon to act as a base for the flowers. It looks prettier and helps to add interest while covering up the top of the plastic tray.

Add your flowers to the outside rim first, then add the second inner circle of flowers next. Try to strategically cover up the pipe cleaner stems as you glue down the second circle.

Leave the center open so that we can add the veil and the centerpiece flower.

In the center spot, glue the veil in place. Make sure that it covers the part that you want to be the front of the hat. Now glue your large centerpiece flower on top of the veil to cover up the rest of the open space and top of the veil.

At this point you can attach the accent bow to the back of the hat (seen peeking out above). And lastly, put a big glob of glue on the center of the inside tray and attach elastic headband. It’s done! My daughter went *crazy* over it! Especially because she isn’t allowed to touch my grandmother’s hat, much to her dismay. Now she has one of her own.

Now that’s both creative crafting and smart parenting, eh??

If you liked this craft, you might also like this tissue paper flower topiary, too!

Behold, the Tissue Paper Flower Topiary

I’m actually thinking of making myself a two-tiered one to put in my office. That seems so dorky when I say that out loud though…

What You Need to Make the Tissue Paper Flower Topiary

3 sheets of green tissue paper (ideally in three different shades of green)

3 sheets of pink tissue paper (again ideally in three different shades of pink, or whatever three colors you want)

I think the reason this turned out so well was because I was able to use different shades of green and pink tissue paper. Normal tissue paper packages don’t come so nicely shaded for paper flower crafts, but I swear by a huge package of tissue paper I am able to get at Hobby Lobby for $5 (inconveniently they don’t sell online, but CreateforLess has shades of green at $.89 a package).

A 3 inch styrofoam ball

A small cylinder or cube of floral foam to stick into the clay pot (You could also use play dough)
(I cut a triangle of styrofoam from some appliance packaging we had around the house)

A 3 inch (or so) mini clay plant pot

Plain straight pins

4 straight pins with pretty pearlescent ball on top for the main flowers

A 6″-7″ inch stick from your yard

How to Make the Tissue Paper Flower Topiary

First cut up the green tissue paper into approximately 2 inch squares. They are going to get crumpled up, so don’t worry about being precise or anything.

Start scrunching up the squares into loose little balls. I found it worked best if I rolled them between my hands as if it were clay I was trying to roll into a ball. Even on a tiny ball you will need a surprisingly large number of these, because you want them to be relatively close together.

Next just start pinning them to the styrofoam ball. Don’t put them too close together, because you will want to have room to put in the flowers. You can see in the second photo how close I put them together.

Now cut up your pink tissue paper into squares. For the largest flowers I used about 3 inch squares, the medium about two inch squares and the small about one inch squares. Again, this is approximate, because they are just going to get crumpled up again.

Add the largest flowers first, because they will be the most prominent and need to be placed somewhat evenly around the ball. I thought I was going to add a lot, but found that four was plenty. If you can find straight pins with the pretty pearl tops, use those to attach the largest flowers. If you have a lot of those, you can also use them for your smaller flowers too. I didn’t, so I just used regular straight pins everywhere else.

Then add the smaller flowers in between the green ‘leaves’ where you can still see the styrofoam.

Next, decide what part of the ball you want to be the top, and stuff the stick from your yard into the bottom. I didn’t take a picture of this part, because it’s pretty dang easy to do. Then shove the cylinder or dough into the flower post, and stuff the stick into the midde so that it is standing straight up.

Cover the foam base with green tissue like you did the top ball, but this time, don’t let the styrofoam peek through.

And ta – da, you are done!

Admittedly I’m more interested in garden crafts than I am with gardening… but I might plant something this year just so I can use these plant markers! I have to say I think this is one of my favorite projects I’ve ever come up with!

I sat today and tried to think of every vegetable that I might possibly plant in my garden, and drew them up for this craft pattern download. I believe I only scratched the surface of what vegetables are actually out there though:

Tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins, broccoli, potatoes, corn, lettuce, peas, onions, orange peppers, green peppers, cucumbers, beets (or radishes, I suppose), watermelon, beans, red peppers, yellow peppers and squash.

Download the printable plant marker artwork

So suffice it to say that if you see some fruits or vegetables that I’ve missed, please leave them in a comment and I’ll create a plant markers garden craft “version 2.0″ in the next few days.

What you Need to Make these Plant Markers Garden Craft

Plant Markers Materials

• Download and print the fruit and vegetable illustrations on a color printer
  (You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader)
• Sticks from your yard, cut to about 6″ – 8″ inches tall
• Raffia
• Rubber cement or glass glue
• Small clear glass aquarium pebbles, the approximately 3/4 inch size. As tempting as it is, avoid the larger glass pebbles that are over an inch in diameter. They seem like they will work, but the way they are made, they always have wrinkles in the glass on the flat part, which makes it very hard to see the pictures beneath the glass

How to Make these Plant Markers Garden Craft

Glue the paper between the glass pebbles

Carefully cut out the circles of the plant markers you plan on using. I used a 3/4″ hole punch at first, but it was a little too big and I had to trim them down.

When I made these recently I used rubber cement, but in the past I have used this awesome glass glue called Eclectic Adhesive E6000 that I think actually worked better. It’s thicker and left less bubbles between the paper and the glass, and is totally weather proof. Glue the paper veggie circles between two glass pebbles and let dry.

Attach the glued pebbles to the top of the sticks

If you’re using that E6000 glue, you can use it for this next step, too. Otherwise grab a hot glue gun, and attach the two glued together pebbles to the top of the stick. If you’re really picky about what works best, I would use the E6000 for the first step and the glue gun for this step and the next one.

Wrap the raffia around the base

After the glue is dry/cooled off, wrap a 6″ – 8″ inch piece of raffia over the glued area to cover it up. Wrap it in a few layers so that the top layers hold the starting end in place. Then grab that glue gun again and put a dab of it on the back side of the raffia to secure the finishing end in place. This may sound tricky or hard, but it isn’t. It’s super-easy. Trim the ends of the raffia that are still sticking out.

Waterproof the crevice between the pebbles

Now you’re almost done, but you still have paper in between two pebbles that could possibly get wet when it rains. So you need to put a thin layer of glue in the crevice between the two pebbles to seal out the water. You can do this with the rubber cement brush (or more easily with a smaller pain brush), or use your fingers to spread the E6000 glue. It’s ok if it turns out just a little sloppy, because it’s really hard to see anyway.

Now comes the hard part – you can’t use them until you plant your garden!

Tissue Paper Flowers Book

But really, tissue paper flowers are so easy – they are the ultimate kids craft. You simply can’t mess them up. And the crumplier they are, the prettier they are!

Spring Tissue Paper Flowers

What you Need to Make Tissue Paper Flowers

• Tissue paper
• Green pipe cleaners (I just can’t get used to calling them ‘chenille stems’. Guess I’m old.)
• Scissors

I like to use shades of color that are somewhat similar and closer to nature, to make the flowers look more realistic. You can get tissue paper almost anywhere, but I found a ‘jumbo pack’ at my local Hobby Lobby for $5, and it gives you 20+ colors to use.

How to Make Tissue Paper Flowers

Tissue Paper Flowers Step 1

For these particular flowers, I used two shades of light blue and a light yellow. You can also add green ‘leaves’ if you want. I cut three pieces of each of the blue petals, and 4 or 5 of the yellow petals. I didn’t use a pattern to cut them out, and you can tell the petals are rather lopsided and ugly. It doesnt’ matter! It makes it look more natural when you’re done! For the yellow circles, I also made cuts towards the center of the circle (you can see them better in the next photo).

Tissue Paper Flowers Step 2

Stick the flowers onto the end of the pipe cleaner, largest first, smallest last. If you wanted to put the green leaves on yours, put them on before you put on the petal pieces. I put them on one at a time and made sure the petals didn’t line up with each other, that way the lopsidedness of the cutting magically evens itself out. Bend the top of the pipe cleaner to prevent them from coming off the end.

Tissue Paper Flowers Step 3

Next is my daughter’s favorite part – crumple it up! in fact, I like to crumple mine, uncrumple them, and recrumple them up again to make sure they are, erm, well crumpled.

Photo of Finished Tissue Paper Flowers

Uncrumple yours and enjoy!

You may also like our easy paper kites or this printable bunny mask from our sister site Animal Jr.

Easy Easter Tree Craft

I absolutely love Easter trees. They are so simple and elegant, yet somehow can dress up an adult room even when the kids make them. This easy Easter tree is made with beads and feather animals from my local dollar store. I spent a grand total of $3 to put it together.

What you Need to Make this Easy Easter Tree Craft

• A toilet paper roll
• A piece of origami paper or wrapping paper, cut to fit around the toilet paper roll
• Green tissue paper
• Play Dough, or something else to weight the bottom of the ‘vase’
• Sticks from your yard
• Curling ribbon
• Package of assorted wooden beads (use whatever beads you want, but make sure the holes in the beads are lard enough to fit onto the ends of the branches). The beads on this tree came from one coordinated package of beads
• Fake feather bird (I got  a package of two at the dollar store) (plus a paper clip if the one you buy doesn’t have a wire attached to it)
• Feather butterfly (came in a package of three at the dollar store)
• Glue
• Wire cutters

How to Make this Easy Easter Tree Craft

Stabilize the branches and vase

First you need to ensure the tree won’t fall over once you make it. Start by putting some play dough in the bottom of the toilet paper roll, and stick the branches into it. Support the branches on the sides with extra tissue paper, newspaper, or other scrap paper. If you don’t have play dough around, you can improvise. I used an upside down single-serve container of salad dressing. You could also use a Crystal Light tub for the base, but it’s not really heavy enough to stabilize the project, so you would need to put something else inside of it to give it a little weight.

Add Tissue Paper Grass

Next, wrap the origami or wrapping paper around the toilet paper roll, cut it to size and glue it into place. Then camoflauge the inside of the craft with tissue paper ‘grass’. Cut little squares of green tissue paper around 2″ square and twist them in the center (we called these ‘ghosties’ when we made homecoming floats in high school!). Tuck the ghosties into the top of the toilet paper roll until you can’t see the rest of the stuff inside of it.

Add your feather bird

The birds I bought at the dollar store had a little wire sticking out of the bottom, which made it super-easy to simply wrap the wire around one of the branches. You may need wire cutters to clip off the excess. If your bird doesn’t have a wire attached, unbend a paper clip and stick it into the styrofoam bird, and then wrap the other end around the branch. Do the same with the feather butterfly (I hot glued this on, because everything in life is easier with a hot glue gun around).

Glue the Beads onto the Branches

Now we get to decorate the tree! First glue the small round beads onto the ends of the branches. Space them out randomly and you don’t need to add them to every single branch. I used a hot glue gun because they are so easy, but little kids can do this with regular glue too. Just add a large-ish drop of glue to the end of the stick and pop on your bead.

Make mini Easter ornaments

Lastly, put together your mini Easter ornaments. I tied the top with a loop and bow, then slipped a small pink bead onto the bottom and slid it up to the middle of the ribbon. You may have to fold the ribbon in half to get it to fit into the bead hole.  Then I put a dot of glue into the bead hole of the larger yellow beads and simply stuck the ribbon end in. I actually think that because the wooden beads were a little rough on the inside, I probably didn’t even need to glue them, as it would have stayed on the end without it. I made only three of them, which seemed more than enough to keep this Easter tree simple yet pretty.

Easy Easter Tree Craft

Hang your mini ornaments and enjoy!

You may also be interested in this plaster handprint kit from Plaid Crafts. I used it with one of my children and to this day kick myself in the pants for not doing it with the other two when they were little!

Easter Bunny Painted Handprint Easter Bunny	Easter Lily Handprint Easter Lily Craft	Easter Basket Handprint Easter Basket Craft	Flower Bouquet Painted Easter Flower Bouquet
Easter Chick Footprint Easter Chick	Sun Handprint Paper Plate Sun	Spring Flowers Spring Flower Handprint Craft	Easter Bunnies Painted Handprint Bunnies
Easter Lamb Easter Lamb Craft	Butterfly Handprint Butterfly Craft	Spring Rainbow Handprint Spring Rainbow Craft	Easter Chicks Painted Easter Chicks Craft

Check out all of our handprint crafts and the rest of our Easter crafts and spring activities, too!