DLTK's Crafts for Kids
Sports Buddies: Billy Basketball Paper Craft

With the Olympics coming up and my 6 year old's new favorite sport being basketball, I thought I'd start some Sports Buddies crafts for the kids to enjoy.  The Basketball Buddy is the first I've done.  I'll be adding others to the Sports Crafts index as I make them.

I wince a little bit doing these buddies because I can imagine all the requests for buddies with specific country or team colors.  Billy Basketball's color scheme would work for the USA, Great Britain, France, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, the Cook Islands or Cambodia (I'm sure there are some others that I've missed -- there are a lot of red, white and blue flags out there).  I'll try to make each Sports Buddies a unique color scheme so that hopefully you can find at least one of them that represents your preferences.  And keep in mind -- you can always print templates 2 and 3 in B&W and then color them in whatever way you like!

Materials:

• paper,
• printer,
• something to color with (B&W version),
• scissors,
• glue

Craft Instructions:

• Print out the template of choice (you can mix and match the B&W and color versions if you want less coloring).
• Color the template pieces (if using the B&W version) -- feel free to use different materials for coloring to add creativity/personality to the project (paint, markers, pencils and crayons are all fun choices).
• Cut out the template pieces (young children may need help with this step).
• Glue the basketball buddy together:
  • Glue the face on the basketball head
  • Glue the head onto the neck (shirt)
  • Glue the shorts under the shirt
  • Glue  the jersey overtop of the shirt
  • Glue the arms under the shirt sleeves
  • Glue the legs under the shorts
• If you want the craft to be a smaller project, you can just print the first template and make a basketball face.

Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).

Template 1     color  or   B&W

Template 2     color  or   B&W

Template 3     color  or   B&W

Print friendly version of these instructions