How to Make Sea Urchin Crafts for Kids

Exploring an underwater theme with your kids? Making a sea urchin is a great activity when you want to recreate animals that live in the ocean. Sea urchins are animals that resemble blobs of rubbery skin with tentacles swaying out all around them. You can be creative with the materials you use for the tentacles. Sea urchins can be very colorful, too, and kids will like to make their urchins using bright colors.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Play-Doh
• Colored pickup sticks, matchsticks, toothpicks or birthday candles
• Paint (if using plain matchsticks)

1. Have your child choose a color of Play-Doh for the base of his or her sea urchin.

2. Roll the Play-Doh into a ball. The sea urchin can be large or small, but generally the size of your child's fist is about right.

3. Have your child pick different colors of "tentacles." Have a variety of colored pickup sticks to choose from. Birthday candles, toothpicks or matchsticks also work well. Choose at least a dozen to make a nice sea urchin.

4. Stick the sticks into the the Play-Doh base. The sticks should cover the entire sea urchin. If using birthday candles or matchsticks, stick the wick side (or the head of the matchstick) into the dough.

5. Place the finished sea urchin on a paper plate to dry.

Tips & Warnings

• You can paint plain matchsticks or toothpicks different colors, and use these to make smaller sea urchins.