Craftivity: Paper Dolls

As part of our week with Abraham (Traveling with a Tent - the letter 't'), I found it appropriate to introduce my girls to the wonderful world of cutout paper dolls. Our song for the week was 'Father Abraham' and yes, he did have a number of sons.

(For those who only read the more popular parts of the Bible, Ishmael and Isaac were not his only offspring... after Sarah died, Abraham remarried and had a number of children with his new wife Keturah; although she's sometimes referred to as his concubine. And so Abraham is not just the father of the Jews and the Arabs, but also a number of other ethnic groups, including the Midianites.  Read Genesis 25:1-6.)
This is such a simple craft, yet it can incorporate so many physical and mental skills, it's really a wonderful exercise to engage your children with.

- Paper Folding (Fine Motor)
- Fractions (Half, quarters etc)
- Scissor Skills
- Colouring, Drawing faces, clothes etc.
- Counting

We started with a simple paper chain. I folded the paper concertina-style and drew a doll pattern for Ada to cut out.  She REALLY likes to cut, so we did a few of them before putting the scissors down to unfold our creations.  Both Ada and Ida were delighted with the result, so we cut some more, this time with skirts and pigtails instead of pants and no hair.

Once we were done cutting, I had them draw faces and clothes on the dolls.  When I say 'them' I really mean Ada.  Ida likes to draw, but she's not at the face stage yet.  She has always been a good scribbler and has held her pen like an adult from the beginning, even before Ada did! Her targeting is very good...she loves to scribble directly on top of letters I've written, or pictures I've drawn. Just no drawing for herself yet, only coloring.

After making our families of paper chain dolls, I decided to go one step further and use the idea of paper dolls holding hands to create a visual representation of our song for the week, 'Father Abraham.'

Instead of a straight concertina paper chain, I folded in half, in half, and them in half from corner to corner to make a triangle. Using this as my basis, I cut out a paper doll shape so that, on unfolding, I ended up with a circle of dolls holding hands. Pretty neat, I thought, but a little too complex for Ada. If you have older kidlets, they would probably find it a neat activity.

So there you have it...a flashback to my childhood at least. Simple, lots of fun, and some great skills practice. All you need is paper, scissors, crayons, and tape for joining your chains up into one long mega-chain of paper dolls!

For the faint of heart, I have a couple of templates to make it really easy. You can find them here.

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