Tissue ornaments

This morning Zayden and Ivy came over to play and Fintan and Zayden made tissue ornaments (with a little help from their mommies). I got the idea after reading this book. One of the author's suggestions was to give your toddler a full box of tissues and the freedom to pull them out and scatter them around the room. The idea seemed right up Fintan's alley (I don't know how many times he's emptied the baby wipes containers before I started just leaving wipes in the refill-bags because they're not as fun to empty!) and I don't mind the mess, but I just didn't want to waste a whole bunch of tissues by picking them up and throwing them away after he grew tired of them. So I didn't think we'd ever do it.

Then I thought of what happens to a tissue when you leave it in your pocket and it goes through the wash (oh, you don't do that? Okay...well, a reciept then. You're too organized with your receipts to let that happen? Well, you'll just have to take my word for it then) and comes out all compacted into a little hard ball. I thought we'd recreate that process and use the tissues to make Christmas tree ornaments.

So, the idea was:

We'd have a blast playing with the tissues for a while. Pulling them out and making "snow" and indoor snow angels. Later we would gather them all up in a basket and fill two bowls with water and food coloring (one red, one green) Then we'd soak the tissues in the water, tear them into smaller chunks and press the colorful red and green bits into star-shaped cookie cutters,and around a dry noodle in one side to leave a hole so that we could tie a ribbon through it for hanging it on the Christmas tree.

The reality:

The boys did some good pulling out and scattering of tissues and had some fun throwing them into the air.


But soon they distracted each other from the fun activity and abandoned the tissue boxes several times to start pounding on each other (as toddlers will often do when you really want them to enjoy an activity you've put some planning into). But in between "time-out" musical chairs they had a good time playing and throwing Kleenex at each other. When it came time to make the ornaments Zayden must have been hungry because he took a bite of the uncooked pasta noodle (he didn't like it much and spit the pieces out fairly quickly, lol) and tasted the colored water that dripped from his fingertips, but we forged on and pressed that wet kleenex into the cookie cutters, switching colors at one point so that we could make lovely mingled red and green ornaments...except for the fact that red and green food coloring mixes together to make a hideous gray, which isn't exactly festive. So Fintan and I got the food coloring out and dripped red and green on our ornament. He really liked that part.

And here is the result:

They will take some time to dry but I'll post later with an update on how they turned out.

Notes for next time:

I'd probably divide this into two separate activities. Let the toddlers (or perhaps it would be more successful with one bored toddler) empty the tissues at leisure and play with the results for a while. Throw them in the air. Make snow angels. Let them sweep them around the floor with a broom maybe. Then before they get bored, gather them all up together and put them into a basket for later. Then, when making the ornaments I'd stick to one food color choice per ornament and drip dots of the same color on top for contrast to avoid icky gray results. Oh, and make sure your toddler isn't hungry. ;)

I also imagine doing this with other types of cookie cutters to make temporary toys (we have dino cookie cutters for example), so it can be an anytime activity not just one reserved for the holidays.

Stay tuned for an idea of what to do with the empty tissue box... ;)