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Cute & Easy Crafts for Kids

Kids Get Crafty – Pumpkin Seed Owls

Hello, welcome back to Kids Get Crafty! With the excitement of Halloween over, it is time to “revisit” the left overs and get crafty: Red Ted and I saved some of our Butternut Squash (or Pumpkin) seeds and made this very quick little owl. Sadly, Red Ted decided that it would be GREAT fun to totally unpick it again, before I could make it into something for us or friends and family! But he had fun. I guess that is the main thing! And then… We reused them to make my second owl inspiration: Loo Roll Owl! Both owls took us less than 5min to make!

Don’t forget that this is also a link up party/ blog hop for all craftiness with and for children! Do take part. Do be inspired! Link up at bottom of post! Hooray!

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Our book

The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark (Book & CD)The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark  by Jill Tomlinson

This is the story of a little Owl called Plop, who is scared of the dark! Now who has ever heard of an OWL being scared of the dark?! Well it does happen. Plop goes out into the world and talks to people all around and find out what is so special about the dark – Dark is Kind. Dark is Fun. Dark is Wonderful… In the end, plop decided that being a night owl is a good thing after all. This book has been particularly helpful for us at the moment, as Red Ted (almost 3yrs), has suddenly developed a fear of the dark. We have installed a small night light and I believe that Plop has help him along his way too. A perfect inspiration for today’s craft! We were lucky enough to be given the book that also has a CD with the story, games and song attached. Lovely!

The Craft

This is a fabulous craft as it is so pretty. They are wonderfully tactile and they are great for developing fine motor skills. They are also so “cheap”. Just save the seeds from a pumpkin or butternut squash and prepare them:

1) Soak them in water – the pulp will fall away. Rinse and soaking again until free of all pulp.

2) Place them spread out on some kitchen roll or absorbent cloth to dry.

Done. Then Get Crafty.

As mentioned, the craft came about rather randomly and “short notice”.  I was thinking about the “seed challenge” that the lovely Meni over at Dalle un Colinho set, when reading the book with Red Ted and suddenly thought we should give the owl a try! We had already been playing with the seeds a bit – making simple flowers etc – which helped, I am sure. As this was as spur of the moment thing, I don’t really have any photos. But this is what we did:

1)      I drew an owl outline, with dots for eyes, a small beak and wings.

2)      We added glue around the eye. I made one eye to show Red Ted how to do it. And he made the other, then added some extra seeds to mine.

3)      We added some glue to the wings and “threw” on the seeds, then patted them down

4)      I helped Red Ted “snip” a peak out of some brown paper which he then stuck on

5)      Once dried, I cut the owl out. I was going to use it for a Calendar project, I was thinking of bring to you in a Tutorial soon, but… alas, Red Ted had other ideas and unpicked it all as mentioned above! Hey ho!

Oh and Pip Squeak joined in and played with the seeds, much to Red Ted’s annoyance. But what can you do?!

The next day, I remembered the Loo Roll Owls on Autumn Get Crafty. They were so cute. And I thought.. hey, we still have lots of loo rolls and lots of picked of seeds, let’s have another go:

And hey presto another 5min craft! This time we added some lentils for eyes and Red Ted decided to put some in the wings too, which looked pretty! If you want to make these EVEN nicer, then you can paint the loo roll first. We had a lovely yellow painted loo roll to use, but Red Ted asked for the plain one. I DID have to help with the eyes and he loved “throwing on” the seeds again! I think it was helpful that we did the first owl first, as Red Ted “understood” the drill… Oh and to shape the head, I just pinched the top of the roll and then squashed it down a little…

We enjoyed playing with our seeds so much, that I will be saving ALL our pumpkin and butternut squash seeds from now on and store them in a jar to use through the year! Meni, thank you for the inspiration!

Comments

  1. Tatjana says

    Oh, so pretty! You have the best ideas! I love that you’re doing all these lovely crafts with Red Ted 🙂
    And loo roll art reminds me of something Mam made for me each Christmas … Do you still need submissions for Xmas crafts?!

    Reply

  4. Red Ted Art says

    Tatjana – yes, sadly Xmas Get Crafty is already “out”. But dooooo make your Mam’s crafts and link them on Kids Get Crafty? Would LOVE to see them

    Fabmums – yes, it was a rather rather thrifty craft!! And at least I have the photo of Owl 1!

    Cathy – Aaaaaand… though paperplates are cheap, loo rolls are as good as FREE! Even better 😉

    Reply

  7. Red Ted Art says

    Chris – oh yes, I regularly have loo rolls falling out of random places too.

    Creativeedu – THANK YOU so much for the mention, very much appreciated!

    Reply

  14. Almost Unschoolers says

    I’m crazy for this craft! The pumpkin seeds look beautiful on the owls.

    This is a great link-up, too. One of these days I hope to jump in – but it always takes me a while with a new one 🙂

    Reply

  15. Red Ted Art says

    Look forward to you joining in at Kids Get Crafty!! 😉 doesn’t have to be “new” – anything goes!!!

    And am so pleased you liked the Owls!!! Was so impromptu and all thanks to my son picking off the seeds from the first Owl!!

    Maggy

    Reply

  19. Tracey M. says

    Hopping over from What My Child is Reading carnival. I love cute owl books like the one about Plop. My son went through an owl craze period when we found a book called Hoot by Jane Hissey. We found a DVD that had this story on it too (Old Bear Stories; Friends, Friends, Friends). Your owl craft is just adorable too.

    Reply

  22. Red Ted Art says

    Andrea – hope the book helps a little!!

    Janelle – thank you!

    Tracey M – Like the sound of Hoot! Will look into it!

    Reply

  23. Charlene says

    I really like the owl crafts. And I really like owls, but my mother collected owls when I was a kid and she had hundreds, literally hundreds of them. Even though I like them, they freak me out now and give me flashbacks of having to dust ALL those suckers, every Saturday morning before I could go out the play hahaha!

    Reply

  26. Anne@LittleSproutBooks says

    so, I honestly just pitched the pumpkin seeds I had cleaned and dried and kept on my counter for 3 weeks because I decided I didn’t know what I’d do with them. grrr! oh well… have to wait for a squash night! Thanks again for linking up at Feed Me Books Friday!

    Reply

Trackbacks

  2. […] And now for something completely different.  Primary school teachers, or anyone with a few too many pumpkin seeds left kicking around after Halloween may enjoy this lovely post about making Pumpkin Seed Owls […]

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