Macaroni Animals are a fun project for children in a preschool setting or for your toddler at home. Macaroni Animals are simple and help children use their imaginations. It’s an inexpensive and easy toy for young kids to play with. You will need macaroni, pipe cleaner and scissors for most Macaroni Animals. Additional materials that may be used will be listed later on, including craft paint. You can get pipe cleaner at your local craft store. Make sure you get a variety of colors of pipe cleaner so you can use them for various Macaroni Animals. The more variety you have the more fun you can have making many Macaroni Animals to play with and to teach with.
A pre-building step is to choose which animal you would like to actually build. You may want to pick one that goes along with a book or a song or an animal you are currently teaching or learning about. A good animal to make is a white bunny. Once you have chosen your animal pick out your pipe cleaner. You will want to choose a color that goes with your animal’s color since the pipe cleaner may show. For your white bunny you will want to use white pipe cleaner.
Paint your macaroni white with craft paint before making your Macaroni Animal, if you wish. Coloring your animal isn’t required, of course. Allow time to dry before assembling. An additional ingredient for making your bunny is cotton balls and glue. Hot glue works well since it adheres almost instantly and you won’t have to wait long for the glue to dry.
The first step in assembling your Macaroni Animal is picking out a pipe cleaner for the bunny’s body. The longest piece of pipe cleaner is used for your bunny’s body. String it with macaroni then form it into a circle. Bending the ends onto each other finishes the circle and keeps the macaroni on the pipe cleaner.
The second step would be to make and attach the bunny’s head and ears. Using a piece of pipe cleaner that is shorter then the body, string your macaroni then bend it into a circle. After making the shape, bend the ends to finish the circle. The next step is making the ears. Use two strips of pipe cleaner. You will be bending the strips in half so cut the pipe cleaner to your desired length of bunny ears. String the pipe cleaner with macaroni then bend the pipe cleaner in half. Then you will attach the ears to the top of the head bending the ends onto the circle. Next, form your ears to the shape you want. You will want to attach the head to the body at this point. Using a very small piece of pipe cleaner, attach the head to the body.
Now you will need to glue a cotton ball into the middle of the head and half a cotton ball each into the ears, stretching the cotton so it fits well into the shapes. You will also glue a few cotton balls into the body. You will need to glue a cotton ball onto the back and bottom part of your bunny’s body for his fluffy tail.
Then with small pieces of pipe cleaner, attach small arms in the appropriate areas. Then with bigger pieces of pipe cleaner, string on macaroni and attach the pieces to be used as feet.
Your bunny is complete. You may need to adjust your pipe cleaners to make the bunny the shape you want. At this point you may also add details with markers, including black eyes, a pink nose and black whiskers.
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