Have a chilly good time making a snowman out of buttons! Your school-aged kiddo will love getting to make this snowman out of buttons! We will be stringing buttons and building a snowman that you can put on a keychain or even tie into a necklace! This activity is great for building fine motor skills and further exploring work with patterns!
Supplies:
2 black buttons- 1 small, 1 large
2 red buttons- 1 small, 1 medium
7 white buttons- 3 small, 2 medium, 2 large
*This works best with buttons that have four holes instead of two*
Waxed thread (but any thread would work)
Activity Steps
Before we begin, let’s set up our workspace! We’ll gather our supplies and lay them out on a flat surface, like a table or tray. We don’t want our buttons to roll away!
Step 1- Lay out the buttons on your flat surface to create the pattern of our snowman. Set aside one large white button and place at the end of your work station. This will be the bottom of your snowman and will go on the thread first. Next, place two medium white buttons beside the large white button. Your buttons will look like they are in a straight horizontal line (left to right) with the large white button at the end. Then, put down either another medium or a large white button next to the two medium buttons.
Step 2- Lay out the snowman’s scarf and add to our line of white buttons. I used red but any color except white will work here! Put down the medium red button (or whatever color you chose) next to the four white buttons. Again, make sure your large white button is at the end of the line.
Step 3- Lay out the snowman’s head. After the red button, lay down three small white buttons, adding them to your line.
Step 4- Set aside the snowman's hat. Lay down one large black button and add it to your line next to the snowman’s head, for the rim of the hat. Pick a small button of any color for the ribbon of the hat. I used a small red button. Place a small black button down to finish your line of buttons. The order of your line should be the body, scarf, the head, and lastly the hat.
Step 5- Now, it’s time to put our snowman together! Pick up your waxed thread in one hand and your large white button at the end of your line (from the snowman’s body) in the other hand. Pull the waxed thread through two of the four holes. It works best if the holes are diagonal from each other. Next pick up the small white button (that was next to the large white button on the thread) and pull the wax thread through the same two holes as your large white button.. Move down the line from the large white button in the direction of your small black button, threading each button the exact same way as the one before it.
After the small black button at the top of the snowman’s hat is threaded, you have a finished snowman! You can tie a knot with the two ends of the wax thread right above the snowman’s hat. You can also create a loop out of the thread above the snowman’s hat to hang somewhere.
Finally, you can make it into a necklace by tying more thread to the ends of the waxed thread with the snowman so that the snowman fits around your neck. Do what works best for you!