Finding ways to boost wellbeing and feel good at home are imperative towards maintaining healthy bodies and minds.

Getting creative with the kids is a great way to keep them entertained for hours and help their imaginations continue to run wild while staying at home. Over the course of our closure, we'll be sharing quick and easy-to-follow guides for fun family crafts using bits and pieces from around the house.

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You can decorate these milk bottle elephants in lots of different ways. We have used tissue paper, but you can use normal paper, magazine paper, newspaper or you could paint them. However you decide, you can make a whole family of milk bottle elephants by using different sized milk bottles! 

Equipment needed:

• Paper – tissue paper/thin paper, wrapping paper, or newspaper work fine
• PVA glue mixed with a small amount of water (to make it a bit more runny)
• An empty, rinsed milk bottle (any size)
• Scissors
• Marker pen
• Tablecloth or newspaper to protect your work surface

Instructions:

1. Draw a line all the way around the milk bottle, level with the bottom of the handle. The handle will be the trunk so draw a line all the way around it, slightly shorter than the legs. Add a semi-circle on either side for the gap between the front and back legs.

2. Ask an adult to help you cut along these lines. Be careful, the plastic can be very sharp so make sure you trim off any spikes of plastic.

3. Cover your work space as now it is going to get a bit messy! Papier-mâché your tissue paper onto the bottle to decorate it, by tearing or cutting small shapes of paper and dipping them in your watered-down glue. Then place them onto the milk bottle, covering the whole thing. Don’t worry if the glue gets on other parts of your elephant, it will dry clear.

 

4. For the ears, fold a piece of paper in half and draw an ear shape on one side. Keeping the paper folded, cut out the ear shape and then cut along the fold to create two symmetrical ears. Decorate these however you like, and then glue them to the sides of your elephant.

5. For the eyes, draw directly onto the elephant, or draw them on some paper, cut them out and glue them onto your elephant instead.

Ta-dah! Where will your elephant explore? What does your elephant like doing in his free time? Can you make a whole family of elephants of different sizes and colours?