by Barbie L.
The biggest barrier to doing crafts and activities is the set-up, especially if you spend longer preparing than your kid spends entertained. In an effort to minimize set-up, I’ve started planning crafts and activities that piggyback on one another. This one progresses from a rainbow sticky wall, to a glam rainbow craft, to a pom pom drop, and finally to rainbow octopuses. This series may be stretched over several days.
Overview
- Set up a rainbow sticky wall, and have kids stick on various craft supplies, sorted by color.
- Have your child create glam rainbows (or simpler shapes for younger kids) using the craft supplies from the sticky wall.
- Now that the sticky wall is clear, use toilet paper and paper towel tubes to make a pom pom drop. Let the kids rearrange and see how the pom poms fall!
- Use the leftover roll to make colorful octopuses.
- Reuse the sticky wall for other activities!
Materials
- Different colors of removable adhesive vinyl (Or clear contact paper backed by colored paper; Sticky wall)
- Painter’s tape (Sticky wall)
- Small colorful craft supplies, normally used with glue (Sequins, rhinestones, feathers, buttons, fabric scraps, googly eyes, etc). Make sure they can be stuck to and removed from the sticky side of the vinyl.
- Colorful writing implements (Glam rainbows and octopuses)
- School glue (Glam rainbows and octopuses)
- Pom poms (Pom pom drop)
- Toilet paper and paper towel tubes (Pom pom drop)
- Scissors (Octopuses)
- Paint (Octopuses)
- Glitter glue (Optional; Octopuses)
Sticky Wall
- Stick adhesive vinyl to the wall, sticky side out, using painter’s tape.
- Provide craft supplies that will stick but can also be removed (e.g. Feathers, sequins, buttons, rhinestones, googly eyes), and have your child stick them on, sorted by color.
Glam Rainbows (And Other Shapes)
- Have your child draw or paint a rainbow (or you can draw a simpler shape for younger kids).
- Get them to trace the lines with glue and cover each color with matching sequins, rhinestones, feathers from the rainbow sticky wall. Removing all these items prepares the sticky wall for the next activity!
Pom Pom Drop
- Reuse the rainbow sticky wall with toilet paper and paper towel tubes to make a tunnel slide for pom poms.
- Encourage your kids to rearrange the tunnels to see how to changes the pom poms’ paths.
Toilet Paper Tube Octopuses
- Use a rubber band around each toilet paper or paper towel tube to delineate the line between the octopus’s body and tentacles. It doesn’t really matter how high or low it is, each height gives the octopuses a unique looks.
- Draw 8 straight(-ish), evenly-spaced(-ish) lines from the rubber band to the bottom of the roll. Remove the rubber band.
- Have your child cut along the lines to create each octopus’s tentacles. Safety scissors aren’t great for cardboard, so you may need to help finish the cuts.
- Show your child how to splay the tentacles to the octopus can stand upright.
- Set up a paint station, and instruct your child to paint each octopus. Between two kids we made six, one for each color of the rainbow. Allow the paint to dry.
- Set out leftover gluable craft supplies from the previous crafts, googly eyes, school glue, and glitter glue. Give your child some ideas on how to decorate the octopuses, then let their imaginations do the rest.
- My kids asked for my help making the octopuses facial expression, and we assigned each of them a different feeling.
- Allow to dry, and then let them set them out somewhere special as decor.
Other Ideas for the Rainbow Sticky Wall
Our rainbow sticky wall kept its stick, so we did a few bonus activities on it:
- I stuck googly eyes on each square and made a monster around the eyes in ones square using feathers and sequins. Then, I challenged my kids to make even better monsters on the other squares!
- One of my kids made unique designs on a couple squares and my other kid copied the designs as closely as possible on other squares, then pointed out what was the same and what was different.