Kids Crafts: Loo Roll Animal Zoo

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toilet roll zoo Welcome back to Kids Get Crafty! Today, we are using my ever so favourite “household item” for crafting: the humbled loo roll to make a whole Animal Zoo! As you know, I am a fan of loo rolls and have even written a small ebook on. Do go check it out! Today’s craft, was inspired by Pip Squeak’s current favourite book EVER – Who Is Hiding… you will see more in a minute…

The Book

Who's Hiding?Who is Hiding, by Satoru Onishi. I bought this book ages ago for Red Ted, who was less interested in it. Maybe it is an age thing,  I don’t know? Pip Squeak (coming up to 20mths) adores it and has for quite some time. The books is simple: each double spread page has 24 animals depicted (you can see 12 on the cover). They drawn in a simple colourful style. As you turn the pages, the background changes in colour – e.g. blue, so that in that case the bunny and pig “disappear” as their body colour blends into the background colour (see cover, they are blue) and the child is asked “who is hiding?”… To mix it up a little, there is also a “Who is sleeping?” and a “Who is crying?” page etc. And the page that mine like best:  “Who is backward?” For some reason, in our house this translates into “Who is showing us their bottom?”… and Pip Squeak loves tapping her bottom and saying “Po-Po” (in German). Very sweet, simple book with appeal to “design geeks”.

The Craft

It dawned on my one day (as we were reading the book AGAIN), that some of the animals were perfect “loo roll shapes”. Trim a bit at top and bottom for ears and legs and hey presto….

Materials: Loo rolls, paint, bits of felt, glue , black marker pen for features and googly eyes (optional)

The googly eyes are optional – on some of the animals I cut out paper eyes and I have to say, I prefer these, as they look more like the original book.. but you know how much children love the googly eyes!

Crafting with kids painting with kids

1. The kids painted

toilet roll crafts

2. Pip Squeak loves painting so much she kept signing “more”… “more more more paint” (or at least that is the sign we use at home for “more”…

toilet roll animals

3. Once dried, I cut out some ears and some feet. Red Ted helped me stick on googly eyes and other features. E.g. for the lion’s mane, we cut a circular piece of felt with squiggly edges and cut a whole in the centre… For the elephant and rabbit we had painted an extra blue loo roll to cut ears from. The rabbit’s ears we glue on the elephant’s ear’s we “slotted” into “slats” we cut. And for example the cat’s ears are part of the original roll – I just cut the roll “down” – leaving two triangles.

4. And don’t forget the bottoms (Po-Po)…

Caution: you may be roped into making 24 animals – which quite some task… I reigned it in after 8, that was quite enough!!!!

We love our zoo and it plays happily along side our pirates , monsters and penguins.

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