Giraffe's Can't Dance

This is a guest post by Maggy at Red Ted Art. I think it's a lovely idea to make and create characters from children's books together, it brings them to life and enables children to have more interaction with the story.

Over at Red Ted Art , my son (Red Ted (2)) and I (Maggy (old)) do lots of crafts projects. Sometimes Pip Squeak (0) joins us. Usually we are inspired by books that we read - the tagline from another crafty mum being – story + art = great stART. I love the idea of bring books and crafts together. And some days, when I really don't know what to make, picking up one of Red Ted's books really does inspire!This week's book & craft has been "brewing" for a while… I am not sure why haven't done it sooner, maybe I thought Red Ted was still too young. Well, he is in terms of crafting, but he isn't in terms of painting, sticking, helping and of course PLAYING! So, we embraced the craft – a great one for children 5yrs+ or with a helping adult!!! Red Ted loves the resulting marionettes!!! Without a further a do… The story.

Giraffe's Can't Dance, by Giles Andreae. I have to confess to picking this book up, because I like the "format". Our version is a smallish board book. I also liked the rhythm and rhyme of the book and Red Ted liked the bright colours. Here we have the story of a Gerald the giraffe that is, well, a little clumsy on his feet. Each year the jungle holds a jungle dance and Gerald feels left out has he is so "rubbish". Sadly he wanders off… however, a small cricket helps him discover his "inner self". A lesson: we are all good at something, as long as we find the right way for us. Hurray! Happy Ending. Today we are going to make Gerald! The materials are very simple!

1. Materials: 2 loo rolls per Giraffe, 1-2 sheets of A4 in contrasting colours (red & yellow in our case), paints (red & yellow, I prefer acrylics as they don't get so dry and crumble like some poster paints), brushes, scissors, glue and later chopsticks and string (not shown in photo, as only decided to add these later)
2. Paint two loo rolls yellow. Red Ted decided he "wanted" red, so I decided to make 2 giraffes with him. So we painted another 2 loo rolls red. I helped him, as he was getting a little tired!
3. We then dabbed on some spots in the contrasting colour with cotton wool. I think lots of paint gives it nice "texture".
4. Let it dry.

Start on the legs.

5. I didn't have yellow paper, so I quickly "made" some with cotton wool and watered down paint… Just means you have to wait for it to dry. I only did one side. Don't think it matters if one side is white and the other yellow. If your children have a longer attention span, they can help with this too!
6. Cut the paper in to even strips. I made mine about 1cm wide and used a ruler to help me (marked one sheet, but cut four sheets in one go). The neater and more even you cut, the better!
7. The "tricky bit": Take one yellow and one red strip. It is kind of like pleating the two pieces of paper. Glue down the first two bits and then alternately fold over. Once you get to the end of the paper, I glued on another strip. So each leg and neck is made of 2 yellow strips and 2 red strips of paper. Glue top down.
8. Make 5 for each giraffe (so we made 10 – got a little boring, I admit). Whilst I folded. Red Ted did some play gluing and play folding with extra strips of paper! I also made 2 smaller sets (about 1/2cm wide) in one colour for the horns and cut out some "ears".
9. Cut down one loo roll for head (about 2/3rds)
10. Glue legs and neck on (I found it was better to use only 2/3s of the "neck"). I used cloth pegs to keep them in place whilst drying.
11. Glue on horns, ears and draw eyes/ stick on googly eyes

I found at this point that the giraffes were finished, but not so easy to play with, as the neck kept flopping about. So I decided to make marionettes out of them – I used some take away chopsticks (but lollipop sticks will do) and garden string!

12. FINISHED!

We then revisited the story at bedtime. Red Ted was delighted! And the Gerald and Geraldine have indeed been doing LOTS of dancing!If you enjoyed this post, do pop over to Red Ted Art and see what we get up to on a regular basis – Get Inspired by our monthly Get Crafty or just visit for Wednesday Crafts!! We look forward to meeting you!

Maggy & Red Ted (& sometimes Pip Squeak)