Connecticut whales

Connecticut is the next stop on our learning adventure.

The sperm whale has been the state animal of Connecticut since 1975. C and R were excited to make these adorable stuffed paper bag whales. You can find the complete directions at dltk's crafts for kids. We altered the directions a little by using pipe cleaners for the water coming out of the blowhole.

Materials: paper lunch bag, newspaper, rubber band, blue paint, googly eyes, blue pipe cleaners, blue construction paper

Directions:
1. Rip and crumple newspaper and stuff it into the lunch bag (leave some room at the end to make a tail). This is a great activity to develop the hand muscles, and that is important for pre-writers. So even if you don't do this craft, have your little one practice crumpling newspaper into a ball with one hand.

2. Wrap the rubber band around the stuffed lunch bag to create a tail, and then paint the whale blue. C used dark blue and R used light blue paint. 3. Once the paint is dry, add googly eyes or draw eyes on your whale and draw a mouth.
4. The DLTK directions instruct you to use paper for the water coming out of the blowhole but C and R cut pipe cleaners and just stuck them in and bent them a bit. I think they look cute, and cutting the pipe cleaners was great for that hand strength. I was actually surprised that our child scissors cut the pipe cleaners, but they did!
5. Finally, cut out some flippers and tape them to the bottom of the whale.
C and R drew waves on a piece of blue construction paper and we glued the letter "W" for waves and whale onto the paper. (See the photo above)

This craft is also great if you are talking about Jonah and the whale with your little one. You can even make Jonah and stuff him into your whale. (This idea came from DLTK too!)