We’ve all been there: you spend hours prepping a craft or activity for a toddler and they reject it. To avoid setting myself up for resentment, I gravitate toward easy-prep crafts with supplies I already have on hand. Then, if my child isn’t into it, no big deal.

We recently made dinosaurs from toilet paper tubes and it was a hit! All it requires is a toilet paper tube, scissors, and something to color with (googly eyes optional). As a bonus, my child played with the dinosaur as a toy for quite some time after the paint was dry! You can find a detailed tutorial about how to make these cute dinos over on Raising Dragons.

It occurred to me that this would also look cute as a giraffe, so I searched to see if anyone had done it and found out that we could make a whole jungle of toilet paper tube animals; definitely adding these to our to-craft list.

If you want the simplest toilet paper tube animal of all, check out the rainbow octopuses we made last year. If you can cut 8 straight lines to make the tentacles you can do it!

What are your favorite kids crafts to do with toilet paper tubes?