Pipe Cleaner Tree

Our storage drawer was stocked with pipe cleaners of all sorts of colors that had never been used, including a pack that had glittery colors.  So I hopped onto my favorite go-to site and saw such a clever way to make a tree on http://www.thecraftycrow.net/tutorials/.  The shimmery trees looked so pretty.  The kids had made snowflakes the previous week and now, they got to configure trees to go with the winter theme.

I didn't have my partner that day, and I tell you, that tying the "branches" around the stalk was a challenging feat for these kindergartners.  Directions with demonstration must have been given at least four times. Regardless, they did their best and stuck with it.

One of the kids is not convinced that is tree looks like a tree.  Notice the hand on the cheek.  That's really a call for help.  Actually, once the branches were placed on trunk, the kids could manipulate the branches by bending them up or out depending on how they wanted tree to look.

As you can see, they had a measure of success and were eager to add the pony beads to their branches.

Our last step was to figure out how to make the trees stand.  So we opted to use the shapes from the plastic bin.  We just hot-glued the trees onto the shapes.

Supplies:
1. pipe cleaners
2. pony beads
3. hot glue gun
4. base for tree
5. scissors

Directions:
1. with three pipe cleaners, twist them around each other (we cut the length in half for kids to share);   this is the trunk
2. cut graduated pairs of pipe cleaner lengths (to help kids, the shortest length was for top of tree)
3. starting at top of trunk, twist round shortest pipe cleaner length once (one side of branch for right   side of tree, one side of branch for left side of tree)
4. continue twisting graduated lengths down length of "trunk"
5. hot glue tree onto a base to stand

Duration:
Project takes one day