Students will create a cross between a star and a snowflake using clothespegs.
By Andrea Mulder-Slater
What You Need:
- Books and information on stars and snowflakes
- Wooden clothespegs (5-6 per student)
- Round wooden discs (or pieces of cardboard) (4 per student)
- Small wooden or plastic buttons (6 per student)
- Glue (hot glue or white glue)
- Gold or Silver craft paint
- Glitter (optional)
- Raffia for hanging the starflake
What You Do:
Talk about snowflakes – how many sides do they have — do any two snowflakes look alike?
Try making some paper snowflakes
Talk about stars. Practice making five pointed stars and six pointed stars on paper.
What would happen if we were to combine a star and a snowflake? This is what you and your students will make.
Next, each student chooses six wooden clothespegs, two flat discs and six buttons.
Students can lay the flat round piece on a flat surface. Begin arranging the clothespegs on the disc so that all six will fit.
Once the pegs are arranged, students can glue them down on the round disc.
Next, the other round disc can be glued on top of the clothespegs.
Buttons and other found objects can be added around the starflake.
When the glue is dry, the starflake can be painted. Ours is gold but you could use silver, blue, red, green … any color you like.
Finally, glitter can be added for a final detail and a piece of raffia can be attached so the starflake can hang.
Hang the starflakes and discuss how they look and how else they could be created. What other sorts of materials could be used to make a starflake?
