Kids Canada Day Craft Idea

I wanted to create a quick Canada Day craft that might be fun for kids to do, so I settled on a pinwheel.  I used products that I had around the house already, and didn’t even need to use my Cricut or Cuttlebug machines!  Instead I used a piece of white paper, a scewer stick (a pencil or other small stick would work too), a bendy straw, a brad, a 1″ circle cut from paper or cardstock, and some scotch tape.  I used a regular piece of printer paper to show an easy way to cut your paper into a perfect square.  If you notice in the picture my paper has been folded over diagonally at one corner.  Fold it so the two sides match up.  Once you have it folded you can use the bottom edge to trace where you’ll need to cut off the excess with some scissors or a paper cutter.  When you’ve cut off your extra bit from the bottom, you’ll want to fold your paper in half again at the other corners so you have a big ‘X’ on your paper.

Using scissors, cut from each corner following your ‘X’ lines towards the centre of the ‘X’.  Stop about an inch from the centre point though, or you’ll end up cutting your paper into 4 separate triangles, and we want them to all stay attached (where the little indents are near the middle of the square is where I cut to).  Once you’ve done this, fold every other corner into the centre and stick down with double sided sticky tape, or a really good quick drying glue.  You should now have a basic pinwheel made at this point!  Poke a hole through the centre of your pinwheel with a needle, as well as through the middle of your circle.  Glue or tape the backside of your circle, line up the holes of the pinwheel and circle, and attach it to the front.  Try to create a bigger hole once you’ve got them attached.  It’ll need to be big enough that your straw will be able to fit through, yet have enough wiggle room for your pinwheel to spin.

Now for your straw!  Cut the centre out of the short end of your bendy straw like I did in the photo.  This is just to help make your straw skinnier and easier to fit through your pinwheel hole.  Once you’ve cut out a strip, tightly wrap the two pieces together with scotch tape.  When that’s done stick the straw through your pinwheel and tape the ends of your brad to the tip of your straw.  This will keep the pinwheel from popping off when it spins.  Note: If your pinwheel doesn’t spin easily once the straw has been poked through it, you’ll need to make your hole bigger!

Your now ready to attach your stick to your straw.  I actually cut the majority of my staw off (I never showed that in the pictures though) leaving it about 2″ long from the other end of the bend.  The scewer stick works great because it fits inside the straw, and I just taped the end of the straw to my stick to keep them stuck firmly together.  If your stick is too wide to put inside the straw you can just tape the straw to the outside of the stick then!

 
Your pinwheel is complete.  Have the kids decorate it with paper punch outs, paint, felts, or whatever else they like.  You can also find lots of patriotic paper patterns in stores right now too, some of which will have different patterns on either side of the paper.  This will look really neat when the corners get folded over because your pinwheel with have two contrasting designs!  I hope everyone has fun making these Canada Day pinwheels, or for our American friends celebrating on the 4th of July, their Independence Day pinwheels.  Enjoy!