Acorn Man!

We had about 15 minutes yesterday to do a little project. My son has been loving the Creatology foam acorn bases (carries one around everywhere), so I decided to try and come up with an art project related to his acorn. I also discovered some paint mixing sticks in my craft closet... and voila, Acorn Man was created!

Materials Needed: foam acorn bases (or you can use cardboard to make one), glue, pipe cleaners, pom poms, colored cardstock, scissors, paint stirring sticks (free at places like Lowes and Home Depot in the paint section), markers, and foam leaf stickers.

Directions:

1. Grab all your materials and draw some simple facial features on a piece of cardstock. I drew a mouth and nose for my little guy. He told me what color paper he wanted and what shape nose and mouth he wanted. Cut out the facial features.

2. Glue the nose and mouth onto the acorn base.

3. Add pom poms for eyes. We used glue... but you had to use a lot. I would probably use thick tape next time so that they stay on better. We had fun sorting through all our fall colored pom poms and trying to find matching (color and size) pom poms.

4. Add glue to the top of the paint stirring stick and stick your acorn face onto the stick.

5. Take two colored pipe cleaners and tie them around the paint stirring stick to make arms and legs. Have your little one choose the foam leaf stickers that they want to add as leaf hands and feet.

6. Draw some clothes on cardstock, cut them out, and glue them on.

7. Decorate the clothes with markers and foam stickers.

I loved how open-ended this activity was... there were so many options of things we could've done as we were making our Acorn man (aka, "Silly guy"). We could've added hair and even more details... but we had limited time. This was such a quick and easy project and my son was engaged the entire time.

Language Building Activities:

- talk about leaf shapes and colors

- talk about shapes you could use for nose/mouth as you draw them (triangle, rectangle, circle, oval, octagon...possibilities are endless)

- act out little stories with your Acorn man and put on a puppet show

- sing songs with your Acorn man

- talk about/verbally label the body parts of your acorn man (you can be as specific or general as you'd like- head, shoulders, eyes, nose, mouth, ears, knees, elbows, etc.)

There are so many great ways to generate conversation as you make this! If you make two Acorn people, then they can talk together!

Remember to enter our Fall Craft Materials Giveaway here and share a Fall craft idea with us (I would love some fun ideas for a craft class I am doing next week).