Easy Cardboard Rocket Craft

This year's Vacation Bible School curriculum was called To The Edge, and it was space themed. My sister-in-law Rachael was in charge of the decorations, and people, it was out of this world! (Bahahahaha! Snort. Okay, just ignore me) Seriously though, she did an amazing job. Check out a few of the pictures (Excuse the quality of some of them. The lighting wasn't the best in some areas. I plan to post some of the pictures from the actual event on a later post.):

The black light hallway was a huge hit.

My mom and dad put these rockets together, and Rachael made that awesome astronaut herself!

The "computer screens" at the control panels even lit up!

This robot. How amazing is this? Of course I think the guy standing next to him is pretty amazing too. :)

I can't believe how detailed everything was. Have I mentioned that she's five months pregnant and has two kids under four? Yeah, serious supermom stuff.

Anyway, I was really surprised at the lack of VBS friendly space themed crafts out there on Pinterest. There were a lot of space themed projects, but very little that could be done with multiple kids in 20 minutes. So I wanted to share these awesome rockets we made!

This is a super quick and simple craft, even for a group, especially if you have your paper pre-cut. Materials needed are as follows:

5 inch cardstock circle

Toilet paper roll or other cardboard tube about 4 inches in height

Scrapbook paper or plain white copy paper 4x8 inches

3-4 wood half circles

Hot glue gun

At VBS we used plain white paper to wrap the rockets and let the kids color on them. You can absolutely use toilet paper rolls, but a friend at church brought me a massive bag of these heavy duty cardboard shipping tubes from his job. They were already 4 inches long, and they were perfect for this craft!

First run a line of hot glue down the side of your cardboard tube.

Glue down your paper on the short edge, wrap all the way around the rocket and glue down the other end.

Cut a slit halfway across your 5 inch circle and form into a cone shape.

Glue the cone closed.

 Run a thick line of hot glue around the rim of your tube and set the cone on top. Make sure to put it on straight, and make sure it touches the glue all the way around.

Glue on your wooden half circles as feet. (Or a stand maybe? thrusters? I don't know.) I found these in bags of 100 pieces at Hobby Lobby. However, they were in the clearance section for about $4, so I don't know if they stock them anymore,  but if you are making a bunch of these and can't find the half circles, you could buy wood circles to cut in half. If you are just making one or two, you could use any number of things in their place - paper straws, popsicle sticks, short lengths of dowel rod, etc.

The kids had a blast (hehe) with these, and they were appealing to a wide age group. At VBS I had the kids glue on the paper around the side and glue the cones closed with glue sticks for safety reasons. I and another worker glued the cones to the top and glued the feet on with hot glue. I made some extras for our nursery age kids who didn't get to participate in craft time, and they were a universal hit (ha! I can't stop!).

Vacation Bible School: Shrinky Dink Key Chains

Oh my goodness! So over two weeks have flown by since I've posted - sorry about that. It's been a very busy couple of weeks! We just got back from an amazing week in Texas with family, which came hot on the heels of VBS week. My last post was right before Vacation Bible School, where I was in charge of the crafts! I had some awesome helpers, and we had so much fun!

The first day we did Shrinky Dink key chains for every single class from ages 4 up through 18. They all loved them, and even our workers got in on the fun! Have you ever played with Shrinky Dinks? They are awesome!

A quick breakdown if you don't know what they are:

Shrinky Dinks are thin sheets of plastic that you color or stamp to decorate, then bake. In just a few minutes, your shape will shrink to 1/3 of its original size and thicken to 9 times its original thickness. Your colors will be brighter and more vibrant, and you will have a nifty little key fob, name tag, pendant, zipper pull, etc.

They come in several different versions: shiny clear; opaque black, white, or brown; or translucent sheets that are shiny and smooth on one side and rough on the other side. These last ones are called Rough and Ready (snort!), and they are the ones we went with. You can buy a 50 pack of these for $22 from the Shrinky Dinks website, which is much cheaper than buying a 10 pack at the craft store, if you need a bunch that is. On the shiny ones you need to use either permanent markers or a StazOn ink pad, which is fine, but not really the best idea for kiddos, especially ones you need to send home to their parents with unstained clothes. But the Rough and Ready sheets are the perfect surface for coloring with good old color pencils.

I cut each sheet in fourths, then used a corner rounder punch to round the corners so they wouldn't be sharp when they baked up. Then I gave each kid two and let them color whatever they wanted. When they were done, I used a standard hole punch to place a hole wherever they chose. After VBS was over for the night, Nick and I baked them all.

To bake, preheat your oven to 325°F, then lay a flat piece of parchment paper or lunch sized paper bag on a cookie sheet with one corner turned up. This will allow you to lift the baked Shrinky Dink off the hot pan without burning yourself or bending the flat shape. Lay your colored pieces ink/pencil side up and bake for 90 to 180 seconds. You really want to start watching through the oven window at about 90 seconds. Your shape will curl up as it shrinks, then flatten back out completely, which is how you know it's done. Occasionally larger pieces may stick to themselves (which is why you need to watch). If that happens, I've found that the easiest and safest way to unstick them is with a couple of forks. Just kind of gently work them apart, then let the piece finish baking. After I take the pieces out of the oven, I like to press down on them for a few seconds with a large acrylic stamp block to really make sure they are flat. Really anything flat that's larger than the surface of the shrunken piece will work for this.

This was one of my favorites:

I love that this sweet little 7 year old girl drew the happy little sun and butterfly and cross and then plopped a black widow spider right down in the middle of it, lol.

Here are some Shrinky Dink necklaces Sawyer, Lily, and my nephew Max made when he came to stay with us in May. I might have helped a little with the Jays one ;).

The rest of the VBS week included paracord bracelets and keychains, painted wooden magnets, finger painting (for the littles), pom pom caterpillar clothespin magnets (also for the littles), decorated teddy bear banks, Scupley magnets, and some really neat copper and leather stamped bracelets that I'll have a tutorial on coming soon.

Right now I'm off to fill an Etsy order and hit the sack!