Terrific Tree Paper

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Incorporate nature into your crafts with R15294 Terrific Tree Paper!

Eight types of wood are included in each package: Birch, Cedar, Cherry, Maple, Oak, Pecan, Pine, and Walnut. One side of each piece of paper features the bark pattern of the tree, while the reverse side features the corresponding wood grain pattern.

15294 Wood Collage

Here are a few interesting ways to use Terrific Tree Paper:

• Cut the paper into mosaics for nature-themed crafts or collage!

• Spice up paintings and drawings! Trace a tree onto Terrific Tree Paper, then cut it out and paste it into a drawing or painting for a different, naturalistic effect (for an even more realistic look use Crafty Leaves on the tree’s crown)!

• Create a 3-D classroom forest. Roll Terrific Tree Paper around old toilet paper or paper towel tubes and cut the tubes to make various tree heights. Then cut leaves out of green paper or use Roylco’s Botanical Cuts to create a full tree crown.

Stay tuned this week for a special post featuring this product!

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Butterfly Ornaments Bracelets

butterfly ornaments bracelets

Turn beautiful Butterfly Ornaments into wonderful bracelets! 

Age: 4+

Duration: 15-20 minutes plus drying times

Learning Objectives: Use a unique material to create a color resist effect. Learn to diffuse colors with special paper. Create swirly designs, shapes and interesting patterns on the wings. Use fine motor skills to squeeze wing designs into bug bodies and curl antennae.

You’ll Need:

R83260 Butterfly Ornaments Kit

R54460 Squiggle Pipettes

• Clear glue

• Plastic bowls

• Watercolor paint

• Paint tray

• Pipe cleaner

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butterfly ornaments bracelets

The Butterfly Ornaments Kit features pre-cut butterfly wings made out of Color Diffusing Paper. It’s a good idea to put the wings onto a paint tray as you drip-drop the color resist glue.

butterfly ornaments bracelets

Pour some clear glue into a plastic bowl. Squeeze the bulb of a Squiggle Pipette to expel all the air from it, then drop the tip into the clear glue and release. This will draw in some of the clear glue into the pipette chamber.

butterfly ornaments bracelets

Press the pipette bulb to squeeze out the glue onto the Color Diffusing Paper butterfly wing. You can draw shapes such as stars or circles, or make patterns like polka dots!

butterfly ornaments bracelets

This art camper decided to make polka dots out of the clear glue. Leave the glue to dry overnight.

butterfly ornaments bracelets

Once the clear glue has completely dried, use the Squiggle Pipettes to drop watercolor paint on top. As you can see in the above image, all the areas where the clear glue had dried will repel the paint.

butterfly ornaments bracelets

Once the wings are dry, you can accordion fold the wings and squeeze them into the slot of a bug body. The bug bodies are included in the kit.

butterfly ornaments bracelets

You can insert a pipe cleaner through the head and wrap the length around your wrist. This will make a bracelet!

butterfly ornaments bracelets

Alternatively, you can string the colorful wax-dipped antennae through the holes in the head of the bug body.

butterfly ornaments bracelets

Our art campers placed their butterfly ornaments onto the greenery in the area. As the watercolor dries, it leaves a beautiful color on the wings!

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Nature Mobile Maker

Image of close up of Nature Mobile

nature mobile craft

Make a lovely mobile decoration for spring! Our R51302 Nature Mobile Maker is a great base for making your mobile. Add on found objects such as leaves, feathers or flowers!

Age: 3+

Duration: 15-20 minutes plus drying times

Learning Objectives: Explore the natural world through decorating the mobile with natural found objects. Experiment with gravity and weight through kinetic studies. Observe the movements and flow of air and how this affects the balance of weight on the mobile.

nature mobile craft

You’ll Need:

R51302 Nature Mobile Maker

R15290 Nature Paper (or found objects, such as leaves, twigs, feathers, flowers, etc…)

• Scissors

• String

• Markers or paint

• Hole punch

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nature mobile craft

First pop the blank Nature Mobile Maker out from its paper backing. Separate all the elements and then place the mobile on a protected flat surface. Use paint or markers to color in the branches brown and to color in the leaves green.

nature mobile craft

Be sure to color on both sides of the mobile! This will make sure that from anywhere the mobile is viewed, it looks complete.

nature mobile craft

It was a bit of a rainy day when we made our mobiles, so we weren’t able to go exploring for found objects in nature. As a substitute, we used our R15290 Nature Paper! Pop out several of the elements from the paper backing. You’ll need no more than 6-10 elements per mobile. Mix large objects with smaller ones for a diverse appearance. Hole punch through the tops of each element you’ve chosen, then tie on a bit of string to hang from the mobile.

nature mobile craft

Our mobile is designed with ingenious little flip-up tabs that can be raised and pressed down over the length of string to secure it in place. This makes attachment way more easier than messing around with tape or tying the pieces on with difficulty.

nature mobile craft

Our camper friends took their finished mobiles out to the garden to hang them up among the bushes.

nature mobile craft

Even though the sun cleared up and we were able to resume our nature walk, we still had a great time making all our paper mobiles!

nature mobile craft

The mobiles seemed to blend right in with our amazing forest background!

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Paper Trees

wood paper trees

This is our first post about our newest product−R15294 Terrific Tree Paper! The tree paper can be used to explore natural botany with its unique prints of tree bark and wood grain on either side.

Age: 4+

Duration: 10-15 minutes

Learning Objectives: Learn about natural botany through the shape and construction of the trees. Create a forest for diorama or display projects. Talk about the different types of wood barks and wood grains printed on the sheets. Identify the different species of trees to go along with the printed sheets.

wood paper trees

You’ll Need:

R15294 Terrific Tree Craft Paper

R15656 Autumn Leaves Paper Bits

• Tape

• Glue

• Scissors

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wood paper trees

Take a sheet of Terrific Tree Paper.

wood paper trees

Fold the right side of the paper in towards the halfway mark on the sheet.

wood paper trees

Fold the left side of the paper 1/8 across the length of the paper.

wood paper trees

Unfold the flaps. Cut slits across the paper up to the fold lines on either side. The slits can be about 1″ to 2″ apart.

wood paper trees

Roll the long side of the flat sheet into a cylinder, which will form the tree, and tape the sides together. Fold out the shorter tabs at the bottom of the tree.

wood paper trees

Curl down the longer tabs at the top of the tree and tape the Autumn Leaves Paper Bits to the ends of the tabs.

wood paper trees

This is what the tree looks like when the branches have been fully decorated with leaves.

wood paper trees

Combine every student’s tree project together to make a beautiful forest for a nature display, like this one!

You can incorporate this craft into a lesson about natural sciences and teach your students about the importance of plants and the environment. Among other activities, try making crafts such as:

A paper mask using found or paper leaves, like our R15335 Spring and Autumn Leaves

Wreaths made from leaves, nuts, pinecones and other natural objects, with details from our R15334 Crafty Leaves

• Make animals from natural objects! Combine the shapes together to make a fish, bird, bunny and more!

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Guest Post: Straws and Connectors, Autumn Leaves Paper Bits and Dry Erase Classroom Tunics

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Here’s a sneak peek at a few ways our creative crafters used some of our products! All these photos were sent in to us by people who would love to share their ideas. So take a look around, and get acquainted with some projects you could use in your own educational space!

Our first few photos show how the Straws and Connectors were used for building large and tall structures that the kids could climb inside of. We provide each kit of Straws and Connectors with a reference guide for building these kinds of structures and more! Use the diagrams as a basis for designing your own creations.

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We used the Straws and Connectors structures as the inner designs for our Color Diffusing buildings. We painted large sheets of Color Diffusing Paper with watercolors. Once the sheets were dry, we wove them in and out of the gaps in the design. Check out the beautiful photos of this project at the link!

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These gorgeous wreaths were made with our Autumn Leaves Paper Bits! The clever design used a card wreath cutout. The crafters then glued the leaves on top. Alternatively, you could use a paper plate and cut out the center to use as the wreath base.

The video below shows a basic project you can try with the Autumn Leaves. This simple craft uses construction paper and the leaves to make a 3D-looking tree.

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Finally, our last photo reveals what this teacher decided to use her pack of Dry Erase Classroom Tunics for! Although the Classroom Tunics can be used for temporary notation–such as using dry-erase markers to write numbers or letters on them–there are many other uses for them! For instance, this teacher laminated circles in different colors and pasted them onto various Classroom Tunics. Using a story about introducing the colors of the rainbow, she had several of her students act out the storyline while wearing the tunics. It’s a great way to engage the class on multiple levels–learning literacy, colors, order and sequencing, and group collaboration!

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Thanks to our subscribers for sending us photos of their work! If you would like to send us your photos in order to be featured in our next Guest post, please contact us through the contact form! We’d love to hear from you!

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Craft Spotlight: Project Leaves with a Thanksgiving Turkey project!

2014-09-22-FeatureImageIt’s never too early to start thinking about seasonal crafts for the classroom, no matter what time of year! Prepare for Thanksgiving with our true-to-life sized R51080 Project Leaves in a variety of colors and shapes. Use the Project Leaves to create the tail feathers and simple construction paper cutouts to make the turkey head and body. 

Project Leaves feature different colors on each side of the leaf shapes. You can use the shapes to talk about the changing seasons or adapt your fall science unit to include lessons about leaf identification.

R51080

Encourage students to engage with nature while appreciating the science behind it! Students can draw the veins within the leaf shapes to learn about leaf development. Trace out the shapes of the leaves onto sheets of paper, then cut them out and paste into a leaf collage!

Use leftover or traced Project Leaves to make a Thanksgiving turkey decoration! Learn more below.

Age: 4+

Duration: 10 minutes

Learning Objectives: Combine various leaf shapes together into a pleasing arrangement to make the turkey tail feathers. Use scissor skills to make a cut and paste project.

You’ll Need:

R51080 Project Leaves

• Gluestick

• Brown, orange and yellow construction paper

• Marker

• Scissors

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Celebrate Thanksgiving with a turkey decoration that all your students can take home!

P1010327Select 3-4 Project Leaves to make up the turkey’s tail feathers. Alternatively, you can trace the outline of the Project Leaves onto sheets of construction paper and cut them out. You’ll want to choose colors that work with the look of the craft.

P1010328Select the construction paper you will use to make the body. To save on construction paper, you can cut a sheet in half and divide between two students.

P1010330Fold the sheet in half lengthwise.

P1010331Draw a backwards B shape from the fold line. This will be the turkey’s body.

P1010332Cut along the drawn lines and unfold the resulting piece.

P1010333Next, pull out a light-sand colored sheet of construction paper.

P1010336Cut out a little turkey wattle and little turkey feet.

P1010337Finally, get a sheet of yellow construction paper. 

P1010338Cut out a turkey beak.

P1010340Paste the turkey beak, wattle and feet onto the turkey body.

P1010351Make your selection of Project Leaves for the turkey feathers.

P1010352Align two of the leaves together. You will need to angle them outwards.

P1010353Place the third leaf in the middle of the two leaves. This helps to round out the look.

P1010354Finish off with your decorative leaf shape. Place it right on top. Now you’ve easily layered the turkey back feathers!

P1010355Paste the turkey body on top of the leaf arrangement.

P1010356Paste the turkey features on top.

P1010357Finish off with eyes for your turkey. Draw them in with permanent marker or pen.

P1010358Now get ready for a big celebration! Paste the turkeys along a banner and hang up on a wall or arrange your turkeys in a Thanksgiving display!

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