Olympic Craft Palooza

I said it before, but I'm really excited for the Olympics.  Since today marks the opening of the Olympics, I've been trying to get the kids excited about the opening ceremonies by making crafts.  First we made an Olympic painting which you can read all about here.  I figured we needed a few other things just to make sure there was plenty of excitement.  So, we also made 2012 Olympic Torches and T-shirts (in addition to our already made artwork).

What you'll need to make the torches:

• 3 Pringles cans (You can use anything cylinder shaped.  Think paper towel tube, toilet paper tube, rolled up paper.  Be creative.) 
• Gold Spray Paint 
• Heavy Duty Tape (I used gold Duck Tape but it wasn't necessary)
• Scissors
• Tissue Paper in Fire Colors 

When making this torch I googled the picture of the 2012 Olympic Torch so that we could try to closely mimic it.  Ok remember I said MIMIC it, not replicate it.  This is a kids' craft after all.

So first we took 2 Pringles cans and lined them up end to end and taped them together with our Duck Tape.

Next we took the third can and cut the bottom off.

Then we shaped it into a triangle to mimic the triangular top of the torch.

We then attached it to the top of our other two cans with more Duck tape.

Now the fun part began.  We used a fence post and put the torch on top and then spray painted the torch gold.

After the torch was dry we simply added red, orange and yellow tissue paper to the top to look like fire.  We also added the 2012 embellishment and little circles to look like the holes in the torch.

My kids had a blast making these and have been playing with them a lot too.  I know it will be cool for them when they have them during the opening ceremonies and they can pretend they're walking into the Olympic Stadium.  Plus we learned a lot about the torch along the way and it sparked great conversations about the Olympics and athletes in general.

You can probably see by now that we made T-shirts too.

This wasn't at all what I set out to do, but it turned out cute nonetheless.  My original intention was to make a stencil using freezer paper and using bleach to bleach out the stenciled part.  I then imagined this times four (Ella had her friend Isabel over) and decided it was too much work.

So we used the same technique that we used to make our Olympic Art and did it on the T-shirts.  Since I originally intended to bleach the design into the shirts we bought blue shirts.  Clearly if I would have known we'd go this route, I would have bought white T-shirts.  Oh well, I still think they look really cute.  They're just not a vibrant as they would be on white.

The best part about all of this was really getting the kids excited about the games.  I want them to watch and know the athletes and recognize the dedication it takes to be the BEST at something.   Plus, aren't the Olympics just fun.

How cool would it be if we had a future Olympian amongst us.  Ping pong anyone?