How to Use Household Items to Make a Texture Bear

For a great way to keep your children occupied on a rainy day, or one of those long hot days of summer, get them caught up in learning different textures by using household items to make a texture bear. Follow these steps and tips to encourage them to feel their way toward learning more about their environment.

Things You'll Need

• Empty cereal box
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Craft glue
• Wiggly eyes
• Buttons, pompom or cotton ball
• Dried coffee grounds or pencil shavings
• Crushed eggshells or sand
• Construction paper

Instructions

1. Choose the texture materials you will be using for the bear. For the purposes of this tutorial, we will use dried coffee grounds for the bear's body and crushed eggshell for contrast. Use your imagination and available materials to choose a texture of your own--for example, pencil shavings and sand.

2. 

   Draw the outline of a bear's head onto a piece of sturdy cardboard (cut from a cereal box). Draw in the details of your bear's face--an oval for the mouth and nose area, and two small circles for the ears. Draw a smaller circle inside each ear.

3. 

   Draw an outline of the bear's body below the head. To do this, draw a large vertical oval, with four smaller circles to emulate paws. Draw a smaller oval inside the large oval to emulate the bear's belly. Cut out the outline of the bear.

4. Apply the coffee grounds to create the texture of the cut-out bear's body. Work on one small section at a time. To do this, use a paint brush to cover a small section of the surface of the bear cutout, taking care to leave bare the smaller circles, such as the mouth, and ears. Sprinkle the coffee grounds to the glue-covered section. Once you are done, move on to the next section.

5. Keep working in similar small sections until you have covered the surface of the outer circles of the bear's ears, face, body and paws.

6. Now fill in the smaller circles according to the same method, but using the crushed egg shells. Glue a cotton ball, button or pompom for the bear's nose. Glue the wiggle eyes in place. Cut out a mouth shape from construction paper and glue it in place.

7. Allow the glue and textures to fully dry before you move the bear or attempt to hang it up.

Tips & Warnings

• Let your children be creative with the textures they choose. Part of learning about their environment includes a natural curiosity about items and their textures.

• Other materials to consider using for texture are pink crafting fuzz, cotton balls and sawdust.