Sensational Learning with Penguin

Day 8 in our Advent calendar of Christmas activities brought us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, times two! Of course it’s entirely possible to make just the one, but I’ve found that it works much better for us to work in parallell, making one each of any crafting or other project we do, as this means that Penguin can look at what I’m doing and copy me as we go. This makes it much clearer for him what needs to be done at each step of the way, than if I would give him verbal instructions, and it allows for him to work more independently on his own creation, while I make mine.

I prepared the materials before we got started, so that we had a ‘kit’ each, one for me and one for Penguin. We used:

• 2 empty toilet rolls
• 2 pieces of brown felt, each piece just about big enough to go around a toilet roll, and slightly taller than the rolls in height
• 2 orange pipe cleaners (chenille stems), which we then cut in half to make 4 pieces, for the antlers (alternatively you could use twigs)
• 2 small red pom-poms
• 4 googly eyes
• PVA glue

We also used a small plate and cotton buds for the glue, a news paper to protect the table top, and scissors.

To make it easier to poke the antlers through, I cut little holes for them in the felt before we begun. Then we put our Rudolphs together in four steps:

1. Wrap the toilet rolls in brown felt, glue at the back. Make sure the bottom of the felt is aligned with the bottom of the toilet roll, so that it can stand up nicely.
2. Use the four pieces of pipe cleaner to shape little antlers. Using the scissors, poke holes for them to go into, and stick them in. Inside the toilet roll, bend the end of each pipe cleaner upwards and give it a squeeze, to make the antlers stay in place.
3. Put glue on the back of Rudolphs big red nose, and stick it on.
4. Using the cotton buds, put a small blob of glue on the felt where you’d like each eye to go, then stick them on.

The trickiest part of this activity was definitely bending the antlers into shape, and I had to help Penguin with that. Other than that, it was a fairly simple craft, though fiddly enough to provide some fine motor exercise. I thought it was enjoyable to use materials with different tactile properties, and you could add even more to these: Maybe make a wooly hat for them, and/or tie a strap around their ‘neck’ with a small jingle bell on, to add an auditory aspect as well. We might get back to our Rudolphs another day, to give them some accessories, and I’m also thinking that we might like to bring in a couple of Santas to help looking after these cheeky-looking chaps…

Mine is the stiffer looking character to the left in this picture, while Penguin’s Rudolph on the right is looking more chilled!

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