Hot Air Balloon Craft

We went grocery shopping this morning instead of our usual homeschool routine (which usually includes art and a story), so I improvised with a quick after-dinner craft instead.  We read The Big Balloon Race, which is an exciting story about a girl who helps her mother compete in a hot air balloon race that takes place in the 1800s.  Then I gave L and E (33 months) the materials to put together their own hot air balloon craft.  We usually do more free-form art exploration rather than specific crafts, so the girls enjoyed the challenge of aligning all the parts to form a specific object...

 

The balloon is a circle cut out from wrapping paper, the basket is cut out from a cupcake liner, and the strings to attach them are yarn.  The girls went through some trial and error before getting everything lined up 'correctly' (it wasn't from me telling them how to do it - they'd correct themselves if the basket was upside down or the strings were not in the right place).  They also enjoyed working with pasting items other than regular paper (for example, they usually put glue on the back of the piece they are gluing down, but with the yarn they had to put the glue on the paper and then stick them on top).  The results were really cute, and it was a fun craft to tie into the story.