4th of July Craft: Washington Monument

My son and I love craft time. In addition to finding it fun to create the the different crafts that we do I like to take craft time as an opportunity to teach my son something new. With Fourth of the July right around the corner I decided to make a craft of the Washington Monument. The Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool have always been favorites in this house and I thought it would be neat to teach my son about them during craft time. This patriot craft is perfect for Presidents' Day or Independence Day.

Despite representing a massive structure this crafts requires very few supplies and all of the supplies that it does require are very common craft supplies. All that you need is a cereal box, toilet paper roll (or paper towel roll cut in half), green, brown, blue and white construction paper, scissors and glue. You will need about two full sheets of green construction paper, and less than half a sheet of all of the other colors each. The green construction paper is used for the trees and to cover the cereal box, however you can use any color on the side. If you are low on construction paper you can just cut out a piece of cardboard from the cereal box for the platform.

You will need to cut up enough green construction paper to cover the cereal box. Also, you will have to cut out a series of different shapes for the Washington Monument craft. You need a blue rectangle for the Reflecting Pool. For the Washington Monument you will need to cut out a white circle for the base and four strips of white construction paper slightly longer that a toilet paper roll and as wide as the toilet paper roll, and two hourglass shapes that are about the same length and width of the white strips. For the trees you will need four shapes that resemble tree branches and two strips of brown construction paper each about half the width of the blue rectangle. With everything cut up you can begin constructing the craft.

Constructing the craft does not take a very long time. The first thing that you will need to do is cover the cereal box with construction paper, although remember that you do not have to cover the bottom side of the cereal box. To make the trees you need to take a brown strip and fold it in half and then fold each of those halves up about a third of the way. You will see this creates a bottom for the strips to stand on, at the top glue on the tree branches on both sides. To create the Washington Monument you just need to glue on the white strips to each side of the toilet paper roll, and to fold over the hourglass shapes over one another so that they rest inside the four strips of white construction paper at the top of the toilet paper roll. Then place the pool on one side of the cereal box, the two bunches of trees on either side of the pool, place the white circle on the other side and the Washington Monument on top of the white circle. Now you are done!

This craft is easy enough that a young child can do it with help, my son was four years old when we did it together. It is perfect for children of all ages especially older children that want to add a fun and exciting element to a history project. If you want to line the short sides of the cereal box with another color that works too. A neat idea is to line it with red and white stripes. Children can add more detail if they want and they can even increase the size of the craft by using more than one cereal box and using a paper towel roll (or two toilet paper rolls taped together). You can find step-by-step instructions and pictures of this craft as well as many other fun crafts for children of all ages at EasyToddlerCrafts.com. I am glad that my son and I made this craft together and I look forward to making more in the future.