Enjoy your own rain shower without getting wet when you make this kid's craft.

I am so thrilled that spring is here, and we celebrated its arrival by making a rainstick.  Everything we needed for this craft was already around the house, and some of it was even recycled.  How’s that for getting into the spirit of April?  Not only have we covered the whole “April showers” thing, but we kind of hit on Earth Day, as well.

Once your rainstick craft is done, you can turn it from end to end and hear it “rain” as the rice inside slides from one end to the other.  I find that turning it slowly makes for a more realistic rain effect.

Related Pages: Recycled box aliens, 12 More Recycled Crafts for Kids

To make a rainstick, you will need:

• An empty paper towel roll
• Left over tissue paper
• Scissors
• White glue
• Paint brush
• Rubber bands
• Wax paper
• Aluminum foil
• Rice/Popcorn kernels (if I made another one, I would just stick with the rice because I think it sounds more like rain)

The materials for an April showers rainstick craft.

Start with a sheet of aluminum foil about 25" long.

Roll the aluminum foil into a long tube to make the interior of the rainstick craft. I wrapped ours around a dowel.

Curl the foil into a spring. Again, I used the dowel.

You'll want the final coil to be just about the length of your paper towel roll. It then gets placed inside the rainstick.

Wrap wax paper around one end of your rainstick craft, and affix it with a rubber band. I then cut off the excess.

Have your kiddo help you pour in rice, popcorn kernels, or whatever you've decided to use to make your sound effects.

Seal up the other end of your rainstick craft with wax paper and a rubber band.

Cut your tissue paper into small pieces (about an inch or so). We recycled tissue from presents we've received.

Mix white glue with a little water and use your paint brush to decoupage the tissue paper on to your rainstick.

I decoupaged the tissue paper right over the wax paper to make it less likely to come loose and fall off.

What I Learned the Hard Way: I originally had cut out wax paper circles to put over the ends, but I found them really hard to work with, so I ended up just using a bigger chunk of wax paper and cutting it after I put the rubber band on.  Also, the popcorn doesn’t sound nearly as good as the rice.

Related Pages: Printable Olympics bingo, Olympics coloring pages, Olympics kids activities

Olympics Crafts for Kids

Here are four Summer Olympic and Winter Olympic crafts for all Olympic Games:

Olympic Torch Kids Craft	Paper Plate Olympic Rings Craft	Olympic Medals Craft	Olympic Flags Craft for Kids

Vancouver 2010 Olympics Crafts

Have you checked out yet the absolutely adorable Vancouver Olympics Mascots site? Their names are Miga, Quatchi and Sumi, and they are so freaking cute I can hardly stand it!

Vancouver Olympics Craft - Sumi Paper Craft	Vancouver Olympics Craft - Quatchi Paper Craft	Vancouver Olympics Craft - Miga Paper Craft	First Nations Totem Pole Craft

Olympics Party Game

Check out our free winter Olympics bingo game over at Classroom Jr.!

More Olympics Printables

Olympic Medal Count Worksheet

Olympic Word Search

Printable Training Journal

Vancouver Printables and Olympics Activities

Here are more turkey crafts and turkey paper bag crafts, too!

Paper Turkey Construction Paper Turkey Craft

Fall Tree Autumn Leaves Handprint Tree

Cardboard Turkey Toilet Paper Roll Turkey

Keepsake Plates Handprint Keepsake Plates

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

Make a Pillbox Hat from a Microwave Dinner Tray	Recycle a Sock into a Giraffe Sock Puppet	Make Stuffed Animal Headphones Via DollarStoreCrafts	Adorable Egg Carton Crafts Roundup on The Crafty Crow
One Pretty Thing Shares 12 More Recycled Crafts!	Make Egg Carton Caterpillars	Make a Nightlight from a Recycled Crystal Light Container	Recycled Jello Box Aliens
Make a “fossil” from coffee grounds	Turn an old pair of jeans into a denim purse	Refashioned T-Shirts	Upcycled Photo Holder or Jewelry Holder

For more green goodness, check out our collection of Earth Day printables, crafts, and activities for kids from all Woo! Jr. Network websites!

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!