Happy Columbus Day! How many times have you heard the saying, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”? 😉 I know, I know…now there is a lot of disagreement about what Christopher Columbus did or didn’t do, but one thing I think we can safely say is he was an explorer. So to celebrate Columbus Day today, let’s help the kids become explorers!
The first thing an explorer needs is a cool hat, right? 😉 I’m going to show you how to make a cool explorer’s hat out of paper. I am using a piece of construction paper so you can see more clearly how to make it, but you might want to use something bigger like newspaper. Just depends on how big the person’s head is that you are making it for.
To start, I got a piece of green construction paper.
Here’s how to make your hat. Fold it in half the long way.
Open it back up.
Now fold it in half the other way.
Leaving the paper folded, fold in one top corner of the paper to the middle line so it looks like a triangle.
Now do the same thing on the other side.
Fold one side of the paper’s straight edge up so the fold is at the bottom of the triangles.
Turn the paper over.
And fold the other side up the same way.
Your hat is done! Pull it open at the bottom folded edge.
This little guy was happy to be a model for your new explorer’s hat. 🙂
As I already mentioned, you can use different sizes of paper to make different sizes of hats. Here is the one I made with construction paper, one made with a single sheet of newspaper and one made with a full sheet of newspaper.
For the full sheet of newspaper size, you might need to let your triangles not meet in the middle so that you still have paper left over to fold the edges up.
Barbie and Ken thought it would be fun to be explorers too!
What else does an explorer need to go exploring? Maybe a spyglass? Let’s make one of those too! All you need is an empty paper towel or toilet paper roll, a piece of paper and markers or crayons.
Cover the tube with the construction paper if it has a lot of glue marks on it like this one does. Use glue or tape to hold it in place. (I used tape because it doesn’t need drying time.)
Let your kids decorate their spyglass with markers or crayons.
You are now ready to be an explorer!! What does an explorer do? Well, they put their explorer hats on and walk around the house or outside and they look through their spyglass to see what they can spy! They use their imagination to discover a new land. Be careful because you never know what kind of strange animals you might find!
Also watch out for things like carpet that might have quicksand or lava! You might need to jump from rug to rug in order to not get sucked in! 😉 I hope your new hat and spyglass will make exploring a ton of fun!
The Kids Niche 