This craft is terrific for practicing both shapes and colours.  It also makes a nice gift for a new young sibling's bedroom!

When making the craft, have your child point out the circle, square, etc.  Also have them point out the red shape, the green shape, etc.  Or ask them to color the circle blue, the square red, etc.  To reinforce their shapes and colours.

We usually create our mobiles by using two straws or sticks taped or tied in a criss-cross or by using one paper towel or gift wrap roll with all the pieces tied to it (this isn't as 3D a mobile, but is good for recycling).

Materials:

• a printer,
• paper,
• some crayons, paint, markers or pencil crayons,
• scissors,
• glue,
• string or yarn.
  
  EITHER
• small paper plate or circle of cardboard (old cereal boxes are a good source of cardboard) AND two straws or sticks
   
  OR
• a paper towel roll
   
  OR
• ice cream container lid

Instructions:

• Print out the template of choice.  You can print out as many as you want to fill up your mobile.
• Color (where appropriate) and cut out the template pieces along the dotted lines.
• Fold the template pieces in half and glue the back and front together.  Let dry.
• Poke a small hole in the top of each piece and tie with yarn or string to the mobile you've chosen

Paper Towel Roll Mobile:

• Decorate your paper towel roll as desired:  You can use paint, paper, stickers, etc to match your theme.
• string each mobile piece from the paper towel roll
• Put a piece of string or wool right through the paper towel roll  to use to hang from the wall or ceiling.

Criss Cross Straws Mobile:

• You can let the kids decorate the circle/paper plate with paint, markers or stickers.
• Poke a hole through the center of the paper plate or circle of cardboard
• Arrange the straws in an X shape and tie with wool
• Tie a long piece of wool to the center of the X.  Slide the circle of cardboard or paper plate onto the wool (through the hole you made)
• Tape the straws to the plate to keep them in their X shape and to help them balanced
• String each mobile piece onto one of the straws (and in the center if desired).

Lid Mobile:

• Decorate your lid as desired:  You can use paint, paper, stickers, etc to match your theme.
• Use a hole punch or sharp pencil to poke holes all the way around the lid at equal distances (you need as many holes as you have mobile pieces
• String each mobile piece onto one of the holes you've made
• String another piece of yarn from each of the holes, going up to the ceiling.  Tie all of these pieces together to make a knot you can hang your mobile with.

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 in most browsers).

Template    colour   or   B&W

Print friendly version of these instructions