After the excitement of an empty doctor’s room playing with Russian Dolls, opening drawers and plant slapping, POD’s amusement levels nose dived. Understandably so. For the fifth time since Christmas she has a skin infection. And chicken pox. She’s itchy, uncomfortable and irritable.
Back home we painted, beheaded Peppa Pig and doodled on the table. We made Cinderella’s coach into a hat, filled Mummy’s pockets with Lego flowers and watched “bellyolly”. In the garden we saw “no” fall, then “leet” and we spotted a “girrell” hunting for nuts. For the first time ever, POD not only wore a hair clip, she kept it in for a whole two hours. When boredom struck once more, the clawing continued as POD attempted to remove the mini volcanoes causing her so much angst.
It seemed as good a time as any to create some Crazy Animals. They’re really easy to make. All you need are scraps of paper in various colours and glue. You can also add tissue paper and spare pieces of material into the mix should you wish. We made a lion, a dinosaur, a tortoise, a fox and a giant fly. For the the purposes of this post, the fly will remain invisible.
The basic shapes of each of the animals were cut out and glued onto an A4 sized piece of paper. The lion comprised of a circular shape for the head with a smaller circle attached to that to form the face. The mane was brought to life by gluing strips of paper and tissue around the face. Having broken my wrist in the past, I found this quite challenging. Paper strips disappeared only to return once re-cut. Attached to clothing, fingers and somehow POD’s face. 
The body and legs of the lion were decorated with pieces of paper and some spare gingham material.
For the dinosaur, we cut out a sausage like shape for the head and neck. Two further pieces of paper were used to form a body shape that wasn’t square. The legs, hat and feet were cut out and decorated with pieces of paper and glittery card. We had to re-cut some of these when POD tried to eat them.
The fox was made with a rectangular shape for the body and a triangular end for the tail. The legs and whiskers were added afterwards. Gingham material was used to make the ears.
As we’d used shiny paper for the lion’s face, we decided to use black and white paint to create the animals eyes. You could just as easily draw them on.
Crazy Animals was taken from the book ‘365 things to do with paper and cardboard’ by Usborne Activities.
