How to make a potato hedgehog?
When working with children, it is important to use different materials, natural and artificial. In addition to plasticine crafts, colored paper appliques, you can work with vegetables, creating a wide variety of objects from them. Preschoolers and younger students will already master simple manipulations with potatoes, zucchini and pumpkin, so you can safely experiment and create. By offering understandable works to children, you can teach them how to handle different objects and create crafts such as a potato hedgehog and many others.
Preparation
Creative activity is important for the full development of any child, therefore it is necessary to give as many different tasks as possible to children, from the age of two to the elementary grades of school, inclusive.
Thanks to drawing, modeling, creating handicrafts from natural materials, children develop fine motor skills, imagination, and perseverance.
To keep your child busy with interesting and useful work, you can use the tools at hand. It's easiest to work with things that are known, like vegetables. Each family has at least a small but supply of potatoes, from which a wide variety of dishes are prepared.
It is not difficult to create crafts from potatoes, you can use both raw and boiled vegetables, depending on the need.
It will be easier for kids to work with boiled potatoes, since they are softer, older children can easily create with raw root crops.
For the correct organization of work, it is necessary to prepare a place so that it is light and convenient for the child, collect all the materials for the craft and instruct the kid what to do and how to do it. To involve children in the creative process, you can see photos of crafts or master classes with them and choose the version of the potato hedgehog that you like the most.
Manufacturing options
Crafts made from natural materials are an integral part of teaching children in labor and creativity lessons. Very often there is a need to bring something made with your own hands to school or kindergarten. Fall crafts can be made from leaves, nuts, chestnuts, bumps and acorns, but you can also use potatoes, carrots, beets, and cabbage.
To do creative work with children, it is important to choose an interesting object, step by step to disassemble the process of its manufacture, find the necessary materials, develop an algorithm of actions and step by step with the children to do the work. The most popular fall craft is the hedgehog, which is often made using potatoes. To make such a product with your own hands, you need to have potatoes for the body and all those additional elements that will be needed in the work. In a hedgehog, the following can be used as needles: toothpicks, matches, plasticine and other materials.
Classical
To make a simple hedgehog from potatoes, you need to pick up a vegetable of a large size and oblong shape, which will be as similar as possible to the body of the animal. To imitate needles, toothpicks are needed in the amount of 20-30 pieces. To make eyes, you can use: plasticine, mayonnaise and black pepper, purchased eyes for toys. Consider the process of creating a hedgehog.
- To begin with, wash raw potatoes with soap and wipe well. If you wish, you can boil the vegetable to make it easier to work with.
- Next, they determine where the future hedgehog will have a muzzle, and leave this piece of vegetable intact.
- On the top of the potatoes, toothpicks are placed in a chaotic manner at approximately the same depth. The needles should be spaced often enough to make the craft look realistic.
- When the torso is ready, you can start for the muzzle. Using olives, plasticine or black pepper, you can make a spout by attaching it to a potato.
- The next step is to create a peephole. Choosing between plasticine, mayonnaise or purchased eyes, you need to fix them on the face. Plasticine is easily molded onto a vegetable, mayonnaise and black pepper also do not need additional fixation, and there is a special sticky layer on the purchased decor.
As soon as the torso and muzzle are ready, the work can be considered complete.
If you wish, you can supplement the craft with legs made of plasticine or other improvised materials, or string berries or small apples on needles.
With berries
When planning a potato craft, you can consider a number of options and choose the one that your baby will like the most. Having a summer cottage or certain stocks of berries, you can additionally decorate the future product, making it as realistic and beautiful as possible.
To make a hedgehog from potatoes and berries, you must:
- cook large potatoes, you can use both raw and boiled vegetables;
- find berries: rose hips, cranberries, grapes, raisins, etc.;
- on the potatoes, allocate a place for the muzzle;
- if the potatoes are boiled, you can try to stick a rosehip with a piece of the stalk into it, you need to stick toothpicks into the raw vegetable, on which you can place the same rosehip, if it does not hold in another way;
- the eyes and nose can be made from cranberries or raisins, using glue for quick fixation;
- if you wish, you can make legs from large raisins and also put them on glue;
- put any available berries on top of the thorns: raspberries, grapes, blackberries, rose hips and others.
To convey the atmosphere of autumn as much as possible, a potato hedgehog should be placed on a piece of paper or cardboard, which is covered with autumn foliage.
With seeds
An alternative to creating a hedgehog with needles from toothpicks can be a craft with seeds. To make a hedgehog from potatoes and seeds, you must follow the instructions.
- You need to choose a suitable vegetable and buy a package of sunflower seeds.
- On the potato, you have to make a markup, leaving a place for the muzzle and drawing stripes where the needles will be located.
- On the drawn lines, cuts should be made with a knife and seeds should be inserted into them, with a sharp edge down. It is important to place future needles close to each other, otherwise they will not hold well and fall out.
- Let's make a ball of plasticine and attach it to the face as a nose.
- The eyes can also be made from seeds by sticking them deeply into the potatoes, or you can use commercial decorative eyes.
- We will make the mouth from red plasticine by rolling up a thin small sausage and attaching it under the nose.
When the craft is finished, you can decorate it with berries, leaves or scrap materials, the main thing is that they are light and do not deform the needles on the product.
With cones
One of the most original options for creating a hedgehog from potatoes is a craft in which needles are created using small bumps. The creation process looks like this:
- pick up a large oblong potato;
- prepare plasticine and small spruce cones;
- on the vegetable, allocate a place for the muzzle, and place plasticine on the rest of the part with a thick layer;
- cones are immersed in plasticine at a certain distance from each other, it is important to use a sufficient amount of plastic mass so that it holds the weight of the cones;
- on the face, make a nose and eyes from black and white plasticine.
If there is additional natural material in the form of acorns, you can make legs out of them, securing them with plasticine.
With matches
Children often really like the craft in the shape of a hedgehog, and they gladly take up work. If problems with finding potatoes for the body usually do not arise, then there are not always toothpicks at home. An alternative option for creating needles are matches, which quite easily fit into the vegetable and look good in the finished product.
The process of creating such a craft looks like this:
- cook potatoes;
- find 20-30 matches, you can sharpen the bases so that they can more easily enter the vegetable;
- allocate space for the muzzle, and stick matches on the back in a chaotic manner;
- the nose and eyes can be made of plasticine, but if it is not at hand, you can simply draw them with a black marker, and a mouth with a red felt-tip pen.
This version of the craft will not cause problems for children, and after a short time they will receive their miracle hedgehog from very simple materials that are in every home.
Useful Tips
In order for the potato craft to turn out beautiful and realistic, it is advisable to try to make it yourself, checking several options, and choose the one that will be within the power of a particular child. If the previous experience of creating crafts with a child was unsuccessful, you should adhere to the following recommendations:
- conduct classes when the child is ready to work, is not tired and is in a good mood;
- choose those crafts that will be interesting and understandable to the child;
- show and explain each stage, especially to the baby;
- support and encourage him in the course of work;
- be sure to praise the child for his work and show sincere positive emotions about the finished craft.
If parents work with their children, listen to them and support them, then any craft will be up to the mark, and the result will delight everyone.
You will see another way to create a hedgehog from potatoes and white seeds in the next video.