fathers day 2012 magazine: Sea Turtle Craft

Today I am featuring another Rachel from I Heart Crafty Things. Where do I start?! Rachel's blog is filled with fabulous stories with snacks and activities to go along with them. Not only is she sharing the joy of reading with her kids, but she is making it fun and educational too! Her blog is an amazing resource for parents, teachers and caregivers of younger children. Please take a moment to see what Rachel has been doing over at her blog.

Some of my personal favorites over at
I Heart Crafty Things...

1) A House for Hermit Crab (Eric Carl) 2) Mr. Shark Alphabet Chomper Game
3) Monster Pillows 4) Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Story Time

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Hi, I'm Rachel over at I Heart Crafty Things. I am HUGE fan of Sun Scholars so I am beyond excited to be here today! I developed a passion for children's art when my oldest child became a toddler and ever since then we've been crafting like crazy at our house. We love combining our projects with books and also enjoy doing crafts based on activities that we do as a family. We recently took a trip to our local Aquarium and ever since then we've enjoyed doing some super cool ocean-themed crafts around our house.

We decided that before we end our ocean-themed unit we wanted to be sure to make one of our most favorite creatures of the sea, the Sea Turtle.

My 4yr old is pretty proud of his little guy, and he makes sure that when he is pretend playing with him that he has a surfer dude accent when he talks just like on "Finding Nemo". Haha! Want to know how to make this adorable sea turtle?

Materials you will need:
-Template found HERE
-small paper bowl
-small paper plate
-green paint
-paint brush
-green and brown paper
-scissors
-glue
-stapler
-black marker
-wiggly eyes

Directions:
1. Turn your small paper bowl upside down and paint the entire bottom of it with green paint. Let it dry completely.

2. While your paint is drying, print out the template I made, found HERE. You can either print it out on green card stock paper, or you can print it out on white card stock paper and have your child color it green.

3. Have your child cut out all the pieces on the template. Some of the pieces are a little tricky, but that makes it excellent practice for a preschooler.

4. Cut out several small squares out of your brown and green paper. We used card stock because it was what I had on hand, but it probably would work better with just plain paper that isn't so thick. You will see why in a minute.

5. At this point, our paper bowl was dry, or close enough that we could move on to the next step. Spread glue all over the paper bowl and place your small squares all over to make the turtle's shell. Let it dry.

You can see how it would have worked a little better using paper that wasn't so thick, but since we like to use what we have on hand when we can, the card stock managed just fine.

6. Now it is time to assemble the sea turtle together. We will be sandwiching the turtle shell, the turtle pieces and the small paper plate together, just like in the picture below, and then stapling it shut.

I started with the head, then added each arm, and then the two legs. I knew glue wouldn't hold up very well so stapling is really the best option.

7. At this point Luke said, "All he needs now is some of those googly eye things." So true! We glued on some eyes and used our black marker to add two small dots for his nose.