The Sad Giraffe

We have been trying to teach our youngest about emotions. Starting with the basics of happy and sad. Our butterfly craft we made as happy and so we made a sad giraffe.

He also has limited attention and can be difficult to engage. As he likes routine, I have been concentrating on Toilet Roll Holder Crafts, I keep getting him to paint the toilet roll holders, trying to increase how long he can concentrate on this.

He really enjoyed mixing different coloured paint together. I discovered that orange paint is very hard to make lighter and wish I’d mix red and yellow.

 Also I have noticed that when he paints as soon as he gets the smallest blob on his hand he then gets side-tracked and starts painting himself. It is quiet difficult to get him back to the activity at hand.

We painted a kitchen roll holder, and some sheets of paper brown.

He ended up scratching the paper and licking the paint.

We used some old boxes for the face and body, and toilet roll holders for the legs

As it was the holidays it gave us a chance to develop some team work skills too.

Whilst we left the parts to dry we made spots from the previously painted brown paper.

I gave the boys a 2p piece to draw around each. Youngest son was able to correctly identify the shape as a circle (it’s the only shape he consistently gets right).

Trying to fit as many on the page as possible.

Then some scissor practise (youngest didn’t do this but at playgroup they have some scissors that have an extra part so adults and children can hold them at the same time).

We thought that we’d have loads of spots left over but actually we used them all up.

We used an old pie tray for the glue. Youngest loved squeezing it in.

A bit more team work as the spots were added.

I secured the head and body boxes back together with a combination of glue and sellotape

Then we added some eyes. The boys decided that they wanted a “girl” giraffe – something else youngest has been getting his head around is who is a boy and who is a girl. My friend says that no wonder he’s confused with so many boys at home and me being the only girl (lol).

Out of the brown paper I also made some ears and the ossicones – we glued those on.

Then two dots for the nose.

And then our 5 year old drew on the sad face.
Then I attached all the parts together with sellotape.