Materials:

• paper towel roll or gift wrap roll,
• crepe paper strips/ribbons,
• a printer,
• glue,
• scissors,
• something to color with,
• paper.
• optional:  little people (you can use store-bought toy people -- Kaitlyn made her little people from sculpy clay)

Instructions:

• Print out the template of choice (if you use the gift wrap roll, you'll need a few templates to fully decorate).
• Color the flowers as appropriate.
• Cut the pieces out.   (Cutting may require adult assistance and can be pre-done).
• Cover the roll with construction paper or some scraps of nice wrapping paper.
• Glue or tape the flowers onto the outside of the roll.  You can also put some stickers on for added decoration.
• Attach a few crepe paper or ribbon strips to the top of the "pole".  We used a paper towel roll and cut the crepe paper in half to make it thinner.
• The pole stands up on its own if it's going to be decorative, but if you're going to play with it a lot, you might want to attach the pole to something.  Some ideas are
  • Place it in an empty margarine container with some playdough/clay in the bottom.
  • take it outside and put it in some dirt or the sandbox.
  • tape it to a flat piece of cardboard.
• If you used the gift wrap roll idea, smaller children can actually dance around it (I don't think I'd let them hold the ribbons and such as the pole won't be TOO sturdy...  But they can play ring around the rosy or dance around it throwing petals, confetti or tissue paper flowers around all over the place.

Templates:

• Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
• Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP in most browsers).

Template  (color)   or   (B&W)