Crazy Caterpillars

As a homage to the millions of tiny caterpillars that ate the tree in my front yard earlier this year, I recently made these crazy caterpillars with my regular group of crafters. This craft was a last minute invention of necessity. I was making up something at 3 p.m. and the kids were expected to arrive at 4 p.m. Ack! I obviously had to use things on hand and kind of fly by the seat of my pants. So this is what I came up with.

Supplies needed:
Egg cartons (I used paper cartons, which allowed the kids to draw directly on them with markers and crayons, but I am sure you could figure out something with styrofoam egg cartons if that is all you have.)
black pipe cleaners (I tend to only give them one option to avoid whining.)
assorted pompoms
glitter glue
markers and crayons
googly eyes
tacky glue or gel glue (white glue didn't hold the pom poms in place, they just slid off)

Remove the lid of the egg crates and then cut the dozen egg spaces in half. I originally made an example that had six segments, but in a last minute panic when we thought that we did not have enough supplies for the incoming crowd, I cut them again so that the caterpillars only had 3 segments. I even cut the examples, so they wouldn't know what they were missing. : ) The shortening of the caterpillars ended up improving the craft, because the kids agonized over how they were going to decorate every inch of their caterpillars. My teen volunteers went through and poked two holes in one segment, to poke the pipe cleaners through. This is much easier than gluing the pipe cleaners and they look they are protruding from the head, as they should be. The rest is just decorating.

Nature Journals

Every week I do crafts with a group of school age kids (k-5th graders). We call the program Crafty Kids! The Nature Journal that we did the first week of May has by far been one of the favorite crafts. It was popular with every age that participated. To make a journal you only need a few items:

• Stick for the binding, try to find straight ones
• Twine or Yarn to tie the stick on
• Color paper for the outside of the journal
• Paper for the inside of the journal, we used paper from an abandoned notebook.
• Hole punch
• markers, crayons, etc.
• Items gathered from outside to put in the nature journal
• Tape and/or glue
  

To assemble, just fold the paper in half with the color paper on the outside and punch holes all the way through (I just did two one at the top and one at the bottom). Place the stick across the holes and tie it on with the yarn or twine. Have kids decorate the journal, tape or glue in items found outside, and let them write about the things that they gathered.

You can see some other examples of these nature journals on my friends blog here:
http://meandmr.blogspot.com/2009/05/nature-journals.html

Why crafting with lots of kids?

There are tons of websites out there for kids crafts, but not so many that focus on crafting with lots of kids. This is why I decided to start this blog, and because a dear friend suggested it. I have been offering a school age kids craft program at my library for two plus years. What I have learned is that just because a craft is cute or recommended as easy, doesn't mean it will work when you are crafting with several kids. I intend to document crafts here that I have tried with real kids. I will let you know what worked and what didn't. I hope this blog can be useful for other librarians, teachers, and people who just do crafts with more than two or three kids. Though most of the crafts will be intended for K - 5th graders, I also do crafts with children under the age of five and teens, so I will share them here as well.