Farmer’s Market At-Home Kids’ Activity: Beaded Dragonflies

Mate­ri­als:

• 3 Pipe Cleaners
• 11 plas­tic pony beads
• 2 small goo­gly eyes
• Crafter’s Tape
• Scis­sors

How To:

1. Fold one of the pipe clean­ers in half.
2. Add about 10 plas­tic pony beads onto the pipe clean­er half, leav­ing about 1 inch of pipe clean­er show­ing at the fold­ed end.
3. Take one of the oth­er pipe clean­ers and shape it into a cir­cle, cross­ing over the ends by about ½ inch.
4. Twist the ends over the pipe clean­er cir­cle so they are secure and some­what hid­den. You’ll have a con­tin­u­ous shape.
5. Push the top and bot­tom of the cir­cle inwards until they meet. Make sure the wings are shaped evenly.
6. Slide the ​“wings” onto the dragonfly’s body (just like slid­ing a ring on a fin­ger) and cen­ter them.
7. Twist the wings tow times as close to the body as you can get (while pinch­ing the mid­dle to hold it all in place).
8. Flip it over and twist the wings twice on the oth­er side.
9. Take the third pipe clean­er and cut about 2 inch­es off from the end. Take this longer pipe clean­er and cross over the ends by about ½ inch to make anoth­er circle.
10. Repeat #’s 4, 5, 6, 7
11. The small set of wings should be clos­er to the dragonfly’s tail.
12. Slide the final plas­tic pony bead onto the dragonfly’s body do it lies on the head side of the wings.
13. Pinch the two loose ends of the boy and care­ful­ly roll them into spi­ral to make the head.
14. Add two small goo­gly eyes (use crafter’s tape to attach).