Popsicle Stick Scarecrow
In this craft, school-age children can practice painting, gluing, and cutting while making their own scarecrow for fall! This craft is great for school-age children because there is some cutting and gluing that needs to be supervised by an adult. This craft allows you to practice important skills while being creative!
Supplies:
Popsicle sticks (I used 9 regular sized popsicle sticks)
Orange paint
Paint brush
Googly eyes
Scissors
2 Yellow pipe cleaners
A black marker or pencil crayon
A glue stick
A foam triangle
A paper plate or paint palette
Before we begin, make sure that you have a clean area where you can make your scarecrow. You can have your orange paint ready to go on the side if you want!
Step 1: Choose how many popsicle sticks you want to use to make your scarecrow’s face! I chose to use 7 to make the face and one to make the hat. You can use whatever size popsicle sticks you like, and you can make your scarecrow bigger or smaller, be creative!
Step 2: We have to line up the popsicle sticks and choose how we want the popsicle sticks to lay. The hat can be placed diagonally or straight across the head of the scarecrow. I chose to place it diagonally across the scarecrow’s head. So I placed the top of the popsicle on the right corner of the popsicle sticks that make the head and then go diagonally down to the left side of the scarecrow. If you want to do your hat straight across, put your popsicle hotdog style across the popsicles that make the scarecrow’s head.
Then using your black marker, draw a line where the popsicle stick is laying so that we know where to paint on the hat!
Step 3: Paint the scarecrow’s hat! Using your orange paint, make sure to only paint where you have made your line for the scarecrow. You do not HAVE to use orange paint, choose whatever fall colour you like, some other examples are red or yellow! If you are doing a diagonal hat, the space that you are painting should be big on the popsicle sticks on the left side and slowly get smaller as you move to the right side of the scarecrow’s face. If you are doing a straight hat, the space where you are painting should be the same on every popsicle!
Step 4: Paint the two popsicle sticks that will cover the line we made and keep our scarecrow together. Paint the whole popsicle stick!
Step 5: Let your popsicle sticks dry, this step took me about 10 minutes but it depends on how much paint you use! Tip: if you want the paint to dry faster, use thinner layers of paint! Once they are dry, flip the popsicle sticks over and paint the other side orange as well! Make sure to let your popsicle sticks dry before you move onto the next step!
If you want, you can also paint the sides of the popsicle stick! Again, make sure your popsicle sticks are dry before moving on!
Step 6: Once the popsicle sticks are completely dry, you can start to assemble your scarecrow! We have to attach all of the popsicle sticks together. Line up your popsicle sticks following the line we made in the beginning. Then, use your glue stick to glue the popsicle stick that will make the hat (the one that is fully painted) and all of the popsicle sticks to make sure it is very secure! Tip: press down for ten seconds to make sure that the glue stays in place!
Step 7: Attach the second popsicle stick that is fully painted to make sure that all of the popsicle sticks will stay together! Flip your scarecrow over and place the second popsicle stick in the same place as the other orange popsicle stick. Repeat step 6 again, then move onto your next step once all of the glue is dry, this step took me about 5 minutes.
Step 8: Make our scarecrow face! Glue two googly eyes in the center of the popsicle sticks, near the top right under where the scarecrow’s hat is.
Step 9: If you want, you can also add a nose. You can paint a nose, draw a nose, or whatever you want! I decided to use a foam triangle to make my nose! I glued my nose in the center of my scarecrow’s face.
Step 10: Make a mouth for the scarecrow. You can paint on the mouth, or use foam shapes, whatever you decide! I chose to use a black marker. I made a curved line from one side of the scarecrow to the other, and then small lines about the size of my fingernail facing hamburger style (vertical) across the mouth of my scarecrow to look like it is stitched on, like a scarecrow looks in real life!
Step 11: Make hair for our scarecrow. Using a pipecleaner, I measured the hair to be about the length of my finger and used my scissors to cut the hair. If you need help with cutting, make sure to ask an adult for help! Then I repeated this step as many times as I wanted to make the hair. You can make the hair as long or short as you want and use however many hairs as you want!
Step 12: Once I was happy with the hair for my scarecrow, I put glue on the back of the scarecrow next to the popsicle stick hat and attached each of the pipecleaners with glue.
Let your scarecrow dry for about 5 minutes and you are finished! You have a cool fall decoration and something that you can play with in the fall!
~Made by Katie M.