Fancy Stick

Check out this great project I did with my daughter today!  Mercury has a thing for sticks and picked another one up the other day while we were outside so we thought we'd dress it up a little.

 

 

We got out a bunch of random beads/buttons, paint pens, ribbon scraps, snippets of old colorful drinking straws, scrap puzzle pieces and googly eyes.  She told me what she wanted and where, while I manned the hot glue gun.  We counted how many beads in a line or a grouping while we made it.  You could also do ABC beads to talk about letters or talk about colors or patterns.  Naturally her stick has been a magic wand, a sword, has become a creature and much more.

You could do this with an older child (I'll probably do this for Mercury tomorrow) and create a story with the stick as the main character.  Or a story where the child is a pirate and this is his/her sword, etc.  The child can draw their stick or take a picture of it and insert it into different backgrounds. I like how this project had us really working together to transform the stick into something new.  We also used a lot of ribbon scraps and other stuff that helped de-clutter.

One of my favorite projects is an idea I found in a book back in high school for my K-5 summer program is creating a Pirate Utopia.  This can last one week or all semester.  The children create their own society complete with things like: Name, Flag, National Animal, Gross National Product, Political Map, Topography, Customs, Native Art....and on...and on. I can see turning the stick into something like that.  Check back for the Fancy Stick Book, coming soon.