Toddler Group Tuesday - Rain Clouds

We've had a fair bit of rain lately by us, which, for the record I'm OK with. I only do the English complaining about the weather thing if it interferes with or makes my plans for the day difficult. I think that's fair.

So today in homage to the weather, we made rain clouds (which caused the weather to change and be dry and reasonably warm for February. No, really, they did. The power of papercraft!).

For this craft you will need:
- card
- glue
- yarn/string
- blue craft foam
- sellotape
- various white collage bits (as many textures as possible)
- scissors
- pen/pencil

First of all, draw and cut out a cloud shape on your piece of card. Make it big enough to provide a large enough area for collage (we filled an A5 sheet with our cloud).

Next cut 3 pieces of yarn or string, 2 the same length, 1 longer. (We cut two at 15cm and one at 20cm).

Stick these to the back of your cloud shape with sellotape, so that they hang down underneath.

Cut 6 rain drop shapes from the blue craft foam (you could also use glitter/holographic card).

Glue or sellotape a droplet to the end of each strand, and another droplet part way along each strand. This can be fiddly, so we did this for our littlies. If you have more time and resources, you could sandwich the yarn between two droplet shapes for a cleaner looking finish, and it will probably secure them better. (We didn't have this option because of the number of children we have at toddler group).

Finally, cover the whole cloud in glue and go crazy with the textures. We have used cotton wool, white tissue paper (flat and scrunched), scrunched kitchen roll and some polyester wadding.

All finished!

You could also add a loop of yarn to the top of the cloud for hanging, silver glitter for a "silver lining", tinsel strands for rain, or other story coloured collage materials.

Happy crafting :)