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Crafts:
Give each Rainbow the finger puppet design(s) of your choice. They need to colour the animals and cut them out in one piece to include the tabs. Finally, glue or sellotape the tabs together allowing enough room to fit around a Rainbow finger.
Give each Rainbow a card mouse shape with the paws already drawn on. Encourage them to draw eyes, nose, mouth and whiskers on their mouse shape and to colour him in. They then need to stick a long wool tail on the back with sellotape. Let them take them home and see if the magic works! (see meeting themes - Mice foxes and squirrels)
We made these yummy tasting hedgehogs out of chocolate fondant icing (available from cake shops), sweets and cut up pieces of red licorice.
Explain 'symmetry' to the Rainbows and ask them to get into pairs. Give each pair a cut out butterfly (I managed to find some gummed butterfly shapes in a stationery shop) and provide the group with pencils, scissors, scraps of coloured paper and Pritt sticks. One Rainbow of the pair needs to cut out a shape and stick on one half of the butterfly. The other Rainbow then cuts out the same shape and sticks it symmetrically onto the other half of the butterfly. They continue to stick on shapes, taking it in turns to go first.
Our Rainbows seemed to really enjoy this activity and produced some really nice butterflies. In the picture below Joanna and Natasha made the red one and Victoria and Georgina made the orange one.
This craft takes a great deal of preparation but, if you can share this, it is well worth the effort. You could make a simpler version by just giving the Rainbows the card cut out parrot so that they can stick feathers on that.
Give each Rainbow a card cut out parrot and the extra card parts in three different colours. They need to Pritt stick the parts to the appropriate places on the parrot. Finally they need to glue coloured feathers to the wing (we found that it required a lot of patience while these set and we were often left holding the parrots for them).
Give each Rainbow a 'Snake disc' and provide pencil crayons so that they can colour them in. The beauty of this craft is that whatever their ability the end result always looks good. When they have finished colouring, they can cut out their snakes. They need to start cutting where the line of the circle meets the edge of the disc and continue cutting along this line until it stops. Have sellotape to hand in case of miss cuts. When finished the snakes can be hung in a window and the spiral will drop and move in a breeze.
For each Rainbow you will need:
Suggest to the Rainbows that they colour each of their discs a different colour of the Rainbow, (some will choose their own colour schemes). Allow discs to dry. Stick the discs together to form a caterpillar as in the picture. Colour the cotton wool ends of the 'bud' and attach to the back of the head with sellotape.
For each Rainbow you will need:
The Rainbows need to colour the 4 pictures, cut out the circles and stick one in each of the 4 segments. They can then attach the arrow to the wheel (with supervision) using the split pin. Finally, decide what the weather is like today and move the arrow accordingly.
Out of the three different styles of sunglasses that we have made, this is the easiest and, surprisingly, very popular with the Rainbows. You will need:
Preparation Slit between the side panel join of the cereal box with a sharp knife
Open out the cereal box, draw and cut strips to form the frames
Draw and cut eyeholes (squares, circles, triangles etc)
Cut rectangles of cellophane to fit over both eyeholes This is where the Rainbows take over. Decorate the plain side of the strip. Stick the cellophane to the printed side of the strip
Refold the box inside out and glue together
NB The cereal box that I have used to demonstrate this undecorated sample is too small to go over the majority of heads!
You will need:
Give every Rainbow a cardboard horseshoe. Tell them that they need to wind the foil strips around the shoe until all of the cardboard is covered. This will need several strips depending on the length of them. The ends of the foil strips should be secured with tape or glue. Whilst the are making them you may like to tell your Rainbows that there is an Old wives tale which says that they need to keep their horse shoes the right way up so that their luck doesn't fall out!
You will need:
The Rainbows need to tear the wrapping paper into small pieces. They then can stick them all over the card horse shape. They then can add the mane and tail made out of brown wool and add a mouth, eye and ears with the pen.
Here are some ideas for cards: This is quick and easy father's day card. The ribbon is florist ribbon, full width for the orange part with the blue third of a width stuck on top. The medal is a chocolate coin. At the top of the card is a folded narrow width of light blue ribbon.
Jess was sent the penguin by her friend June as a card at Christmas 1998. She liked the idea and used it as a pattern for the Rainbows to make Easter cards. The chicks are made from craft foam.
Using craft foam, white paper and hole reinforcers (coloured black), we made car key-rings for Father's Day 1999. (We got the key rings from a mail order craft supplier)
Hannah very kindly came to one of our meetings and showed us how to make these Rainbow pencil tops when she was a Young Leader with 4th Prestwood Brownies. Hannah has provided full instructions and templates which you can print off by following this link (there are three separate pages).
Pre-cut a cube (1.75' x 1.75' x 1.75' approx) of wood for each Rainbow. Provide the Rainbows with a cube and a piece of sandpaper. Tell them to rub down the wood with the sandpaper until all the corners, edges and faces are smooth. Encourage the girls to draw spots on the cube by copying a real dice. The younger girls may find this difficult and may need quite a lot of help. The older girls managed this on their own and found it interesting to check that all opposite faces added up to 7. The dice were very popular and the girls wanted to play with them straight away.
Pre-cut a circle, two ears, two trotters, a snout and two strips of paper for each rainbow. To make a pig you need to stick the ears and trotters onto the circle. Make a spring from the paper strips.
Stick one end of the spring to the centre of the circle and the other to the centre of the snout. Finish the pig by adding features with a black felt tip.
Cut out of black card a 4-5 inch high cat for each Rainbow. The Rainbows can add the cat's features. We stuck on googly eyes, a small fluffy ball for a nose and then, with pencil crayons added white whiskers and a rainbow collar. We stuck an inch long piece of self-adhesive magnetic tape on the back of our cats. Finally the Rainbows stuck on a round Promise sticker that I had made. This craft could be adapted to other meeting themes.
Craft foam Friendship bracelets We Pre-cut strips of craft foam and gave the girls some foam shapes and scraps of foam to make their own shapes. They stuck on the shapes to decorate the strips and we made them into bracelets with double-sided sellotape.
First we asked the Rainbows to decorate a strip of fairly thick card (approx 1" x 5-6"). Then they folded it in half and stuck a beer bottle top on each end with double sided sellotape (beer bottle top inside down). Click the ends together using one or two hands to make a noise!
During our meeting about Italy we made collages of the Italian flag from plain, tomato and spinach pasta tubes. ( After talking about The connection between Italy and pasta!) The photo is self-explanatory.
When we made these we did it as a game (see games page) The Rainbows are each given a strip of corrugated card long enough to fit round her head. She puts feathers into the holes of her strip of card at regular intervals Once she has five feathers (or whatever number you agree on) she goes to a Guider who staples it together to fit round her head.
I discovered this idea at a training that I was at ten years ago. It is still very popular with the rainbows. Each Rainbow is given a white plastic disposable cup, a piece of yellow tissue paper and a piece of green garden cane. The cups need to be cut down in strips from the top of the cup to within half an inch of the bottom. The strips are then folded back to make petals. A splodge of PVA glue is put into the bottom of the cup and the Rainbow screws up her tissue paper to make a daisy centre and sticks it into the bottom of the cup. Finally she sticks the garden cane to the back of her daisy with sellotape.
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