Free Cootie Catcher Printables

A Cootie Catcher makes for an easy way to keep kids entertained on long car trips or rainy days. Cootie catchers are basically a type of paper fortune teller that takes the form of a folded origami contrivance. When playing with cootie catchers, one person uses their thumbs and forefingers to manipulate the cootie catcher while the other chooses from the colors written on the cootie catcher flaps. After choosing a number, the person controlling the cootie catchers moves the flaps in and out once for every letter in the color that the player chose. For instance, if the player chose blue, the cootie catcher would be moved four times. Next the player chooses one of eight numbers written on the inside flaps of the paper fortune teller. The cootie catcher is moved that number of times. Then the player chooses a new number, and the cootie catcher is again moved as many times as the number on the cootie catcher flap indicates. Finally, a last number is chosen and that flap is lifted so you can see the fortune written underneath. Kids love seeing what their cootie catcher fortune is!

Although cootie catchers are fun to play with, some people have a lot of difficulty creating their own paper fortune teller. There is a lot of folding and cutting of paper involved, and if you don't know what you're doing, it could be easy to screw up and have to start over. Fortunately, there are several websites with free printable crafts that have cootie catchers available online to print off. You still will have to do some folding and cutting on your own in order to create the paper fortune teller, but at least the free printable crafts tell you where to make each cut and give clear instructions. And if you can't think of good fortunes for the paper fortune teller, the free printable crafts websites have you covered-most of the printable cootie catchers already have fortunes in them.

These are my favorite free printable crafts sites for finding cootie catchers:

Basic printable cootie catcher:

http://www.momsminivan.com/cootiecatcher-plain.pdf

Here' a good manners cootie catcher-reminds kids how to demonstrate good manners!

http://www.theteahousetimes.com/documents/GOOD%20MANNERS%20COOTIE%20pdf.pdf

For this one, you have to be a member of ESLprintables.com-if you are a teacher, you might want to consider joining!

http://www.eslprintables.com/download.asp?id=243040

And here's a Martha Stewart Wedding cootie catcher. If free printable crafts have the Martha Steward stamp, you know they've got to be good!!

http://images.marthastewartweddings.com/images/content/web/pdfs/2009Q2/msw_spr09_cootie_catcher.pdf

This cootie catcher is a bit odd:

http://www.brianwhiteillustration.com/games/MisFortunetellerBwhite.jpg

Nothing like a Christmas paper fortune teller!

http://inkyheart.typepad.com/files/christmascootiecatcherweb.jpg

Spongebob paper fortune teller:

http://aniaworld.org/SpongeBob.htm

Halloween cootie catcher:

http://www.billybear4kids.com/holidays/halowen/CootieCatcher.html

Sometimes cootie catcher feature trivia, such as this lobster cootie catcher...

http://www.osl.gc.ca/homard/en/coin-coin.html

...or this mineral paper fortune teller...

http://www.mii.org/pdfs/CootieCatcher.pdf

And last but not least, an office paper fortune teller for times when you can't make important decisions-rely on the cootie catcher!

http://www.happyworker.com/magazine/fun/office-fortune-teller