Crafting—Mr. Rogers' trees

They aren't exactly rocket science, trees made out of construction paper, toilet paper tubes, and green tissue paper, but they are all the rage in our house this week and we have Mr. Roger's to thank for it. I should preface this entire post by saying that we are not TV watchers. Calvin hadn't watched even a minute of TV, aside from catching glimpses of Michigan football games now and again, until December of last year, and then the only reason we suddenly pulled the TV trick out of the bag was because he was sick, sick, sick (and the show we watched, several times, was "Jungles" from the BBC Planet Earth collection—he still loves it). I have several moral and personal objections against most TV shows and the TV culture as a whole and in general we don't watch it, but that's for another post all together. Instead, I'll just quickly say that since its daytime debut in our household back in December, we have watched classic Sesame Street episodes a couple of times a week and various BBC Planet Earth pieces as well, and just this morning we watched Mr. Rogers for the very first time. What a riot.

With Mr. Rogers we took a trip to the recycling plant, then followed the trolley to make-believe town (I'd forgotten all about that), and then we made a craft—trees, to be exact. Calvin seemed to enjoy all of the half hour show (a perfect amount of time), and immediately after he was determined to make his own paper trees so he could have a forest for his train set. We did so, and now he has one.

Paper trees

Supplies: Pen, scissors, tape and/or glue, paper tubes of any kind (we used toilet paper and paper towel tubes), construction paper in your choice of colors, and tissue paper (preferably in green).

Mark construction paper to the size of the tube. Cut paper along marked line. Adhere paper to cardboard tube. If using glue, allow to dry (we put rubber bands around our tubes to keept he paper in place while the glue dried). Latsly, crinkle up the tissue paper, shape it into the top of a tree, and shove a small part of it into the top of the tube. Done! I also used a dab of hot glue to keep the tree tops inside the trunks so that we could have a perpetual summer for our train setting.