Landon announced this morning that he wanted to do a reindeer project. I really didn’t have anything in mind on the spot other than a footprint reindeer where you do painted footprints and hand prints (very similar to the end result of this project and a great messy variation), but Riley was awake and I hadn’t downed all my coffee yet. I didn’t feel like taking on that much of a mess, all things considered. So I gave him a blank piece of paper and some brown paint and said he could paint a reindeer. He ended up pretty much covering the entire paper with brown paint then declared he was done.
I was going to leave it at that – then an idea popped into my head:
Footprint Reindeer
Brown Paint
Blank Paper
Red Pipe Cleaner
Googly Eyes
Paint a blank paper with brown paint. Finger paint for some extra messy fun. Let this dry. Turn the paper over and trace your child’s foot and both hands. We only had the one paper and Riley was very instant on doing this project too so I used regular brown construction paper for their hands. Cut them out.
Landon handed Riley his cut out foot and Riley instantly knew it came from his foot and kept matching up his foot to the cut out. It was quite cute.
Glue the hands onto the feet as the reindeer’s antlers. Add some googly eyes. Take a red pipe cleaner and wrap it on itself until it forms a ball and glue it on. Pipe cleaners need a lot of glue (use white glue) to stay put so you’ll need to lay it on thick then let it dry for a while.
