stART – Patriotic Centerpiece

We knew that we wanted to do some sort of patriotic craft this week. We read several books about Independence Day, but the one that was the inspiration for our craft was Fourth of July Mice! by Bethany Roberts. The book skewed a little young, but the story of how the mice celebrated the 4th of July is really cute due to Doug Cushman’s illustrations. You can see a sample of the book below.

We used the Star Spangled Wavers craft from Family Fun Magazine as the inspiration for our craft. We modified the materials and used them to create a table centerpiece with some existing things that we had.

Materials:

• Adhesive backed foam in red, white and blue. We had glittered red and blue, so it was even more festive.
• around 2 feet of patriotic ribbon (or plain red or blue) for each waver – double sided works best
• 3/8″ wooden dowels – about 12″ long (one per waver)
• scotch tape
• scissors
• yard stick
• vase
• filler for vase such as clear stones
• silk flowers

Let me apologize for the photo quality. My point and shoot camera really needs to be dropped off some high cliff.

Prep work:

1. I created a template file for the stars. You can download the pattern here. I printed a copy on cardstock. I cut those stars out first and then I used the cardstock stars to guide the cuts onto the foam. You’ll need one of each star (6″, 4″, 3″) for each waver that you want to make. If you decide to make them double sided, you’ll need two sets for each waver. You can choose the color combinations/sizes that you’d like for your stars.
2. I cut out the star pieces. Older children or kids with better fine motor skills may be able to do this by themselves. If you use felt instead of foam, you’ll definitely need to use sharp scissors.
3. I put together the vase, clear stones and silk flowers. TB kept insisting that he wanted to smell them, so I sprayed them with a bit of perfume.
   
4. I put together the materials that we would need on our workspace.
   

Main Craft Instructions:

1. Take dowels and use them as drumsticks, or maybe chopsticks. This step is purely optional!
2. Select one star of each size and attach them to each other. If you don’t have self-adhesive foam, you can use tacky glue or velcro dots or the like. Attach the dowel stick to the back of the star group. We used scotch tape for this. If you’re making double-sided wavers, sandwich the dowels in between the two sets of stars and stick them together. Celebrate with your waver (optional).
   
3. Use a yardstick to help your child measure out about 2 feet of ribbon. Cut a piece for each waver that you’re going to make. Tornado Boy was really impressed with this step, can’t you tell?
   
4. If your child is learning to tie their shoes, this is a good opportunity to help reinforce that skill. Tie the ribbon around the dowel stick.
   
5. Make goofy faces with wavers (also optional).
   
6. Insert wavers into flower arrangement to make a centerpiece.
   

You can also just use the wavers to celebrate the 4th if you don’t care to make a centerpiece. Tornado Boy wanted me to mention that he made his own festive t-shirt at camp this week.

Happy Birthday, America!

Check out what other kids are reading and doing artwork for at A Mommy’s Adventures.