Introducing "Unicorn"

 Every spring, the kindergarten classes at our elementary school have a unit on pets.  So far this week, our daughter has come home wanting a mouse, a guinea pig, a rabbit, and a baby turtle.  We told her she would have to settle for a dog and a cat...which we already have.

As a part of the unit, the kids have to create a "pet" out of recycled materials.  They will have a class pet show where they all stand up and introduce their pets for the parents.  When C was in kindergarten, his pet was "Buster", a turtle made from styrofoam plates, tin cans, and an egg carton.

This year it is G's turn.  She chose a snake.  I was happy with this choice, as a snake seemed like a pretty easy one to do.  And I had everything on hand except spray paint.

• Cans - we used 7 of various sizes
• Spray paint
• Acrylic paint and brushes
• An awl (I think that's what it's called?)
• Yarn
• Hot glue
• Pony beads
• Googly eyes
• Scrap of felt

We started by punching a hole in the center of the top of each can.  We used some tool from my husband's workshop.  I think it was an awl?  Or something.  Tools aren't my forte.

Next, we sprayed the cans green.  This was G's choice.  It was a very bright green!!! (The cans are on this odd shaped board so we could spray them in the garage and bring them inside to dry.  It is too cold to dry properly out there.)

Once the cans were dry, they got decorated.  We used acrylic paint that I have left over from some project.  Here is a picture of G painting...

And the finished cans:

Then we had to assemble the snake.  This sounded so easy in my head.  Just tie a knot in the yarn, thread it through, and tie another knot on the other side so the can stayed in place.  Yeah.  I have pretty small hands, but not small enough to tie a knot inside the can close enough to keep the can from moving.  Plus, the holes in the cans were so big that we would have had to quintuple knot the yarn to keep it from sliding through.

Luckily, I had the hot glue gun all warmed up to attach the eyes, so we just improvised.  I tied a double knot in the end of the yarn, slid it to the hole and covered it with massive amounts of molten glue.  Once that set, I tied another double knot at about the bottom of the can and repeated the routine.  We followed this system until the last can.  The last can we put on the opposite way so that there wasn't an empty hole at the end of the snake.

Now for embellishments.  We added several ponybeads for the "rattle" on the end of the yarn.  Again, I used copious amounts of hot glue to hold these on.  Googly eyes went on the "head".  We cut a tongue out of pink felt and glued that on.  And then the snake received her name...Unicorn.  Don't ask.