February 24, 2013

Making Stick Horses with the kiddos


To go along with the “Booking Across the USA” project, I made some stick horses with the kids.  That post was already long enough, so I thought I’d do a separate post here with how we made the horses.  

I took the idea from the blog “Ever Never Again”.  She made these really cute horses for a cowboy play day.  When I saw them I thought “My kids would love those and I bet we could make them together.”  We could, and we did, but it took a while.  

To make these horses you will need:
  1. large socks (I bought some cheap ones at Walmart. I liked that they had a different colored toe, because it made the horses look like they had a nose and mouth.)
  2. A dowel (I bought inch diameter ones at Michael’s)
  3. Buttons for eyes
  4. Felt for ears
  5. Yarn for the mane
  6. Stuffing
  7. Glue Gun
  8. Yarn needle

The kids started by stuffing their horses.  I happened to have some extra plastic doll beads on hand from an old project, so we put some of those in the toe of the sock to add some weight to the head, but I don’t think it’s a necessary step.  Fill the head to the heel of the sock, then stick in the dowel and stuff around the dowel to the bottom of the sock.  

I handled all the hot glue.  Hot glue the bottom of the sock to the dowel.  Also hot glue some felt triangles to the head to be ears.  This was a bit tricky, but they turned out okay.  

You can either sew on the button eyes or glue them on.  We sewed.  

The kids were able to cut the yarn and sew it to the head for the mane.  Using a yarn needle, they would pull a piece of yarn through the back of the head and then tie a knot.  Did that make sense?  


Later, I found that we didn’t have to cut individual strands, but could just weave a long piece in and out, leaving loops that could be cut and tied later.  Sorry, it’s late and I’m not sure if I’m making sense. 


Maren also sewed some ribbon in her horse’s mane, which I thought turned out pretty. 


This was a very rewarding activity.  Maren especially was really proud of her horse.  The kids have had a ton of fun with playing together with them.  They've been playing horse riding school, making racetracks and having races and jumping over things. So far there has been no fighting with them, so that's good. 



Also, just FYI, Nathan has named his horse "Nathan".  Clever kid, eh? Ah, but he sure is cute. 

4 comments:

  1. Look at you . . . all artsy and craftsy and what-not! Your Bluegrass post made me a bit homesick, I'll confess.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know, right? My kids are so crafts deprived. :)

      The bluegrass misses you guys too. We will be so happy to have you back this summer!

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