Hibernation Craft

After reading The Magic School Bus Sleeps for the Winter, the older girls were inspired to make a hibernation diorama, sort of like one pictured in the book.

It's a Scholastic Level 2 Reader, one I actually picked up to read with the younger children, but as usual, it's chocked full of informative side facts, about all kinds of animals in the winter, that makes it interesting enough for the entire family.

The girls started out by turning a mixing bowl upside down, and covering it with tinfoil.


Then, they layered on newspaper strips, dipped in watered down glue. Or, at least A (age 9) did. G, distracted by the prospect of tinfoil jewelry, lost interest in the project.


A, followed through though, and once the newspaper had dried overnight, she added a layer of white, scrap paper strips, again dipped in watered down glue.

The next day, she removed the "cave" from the mixing bowl, peeled away the tinfoil...


...cut a door, and painted the cave with brown, acrylic paint.


When the paint was dry, she glued the cave to a large piece of cardboard. Then, she went to work forming a bear out of Crayola Air-Dry Clay.


With the bear safely in place, in the cave, she covered the cardboard outside the cave with glue from a glue stick...



...and sprinkled on leaves, cut from tissue paper.


Then, she glued on "snow" - the cotton, and polymer powder, ripped from the inside of a diaper (I knew there was a reason we didn't throw away the last few left in the package, when we finished potty training). I had planned to give her cotton balls to use, but then I remembered we had destroyed all of the cotton balls, playing with our tape spider web.


For a finishing touch, she added some toothpick twigs on the ground, and taped on a couple of pipe cleaner trees.

For a simpler hibernation craft, check out our paper bag version, from last year.

Or, for more fun with science, click over to this week's Science Sunday link-up, at Adventures in Mommydom.

It's great to be a homeschooler.