My oldest daughter made this craft as a baby gift for her new, little sister (and contributed the very first quarter).  To this day, the piggy bank still has a place of honour in sister’s room.

Materials required:

• empty rectangular Kleenex box
• two toilet paper rolls or four corks.
• Pink construction paper or gift wrap (or have your child colour/paint a piece of white paper pink).
• one cotton ball (I always save the cotton from medicine bottles).
• printer,
• white or pink paper (preferably heavy paper such as construction paper or cardstock).  If you don’t have heavy paper and wish to make a sturdy pig, you can print the template on regular paper and glue to cardboard before cutting out the template pieces (a good source of cardboard is empty cereal boxes). Keep in mind though, that the cardboard will make it a bit harder to cut out the pieces and glue them together.
• something to color with (paint, crayons, markers, etc.).
• scissors.
• glue

Optional:

• glitter or glitter glue.
• Pink felt
• Pink or white pipe cleaner (for tail)

Instructions:

• FEET:
  • If using toilet paper rolls, cut each roll in half so you have four short tubes. May require adult assistance.
  • Paint the corks pink (or leave them brown) or paint/colour the toilet paper rolls depending on which you are using.
  • As an alternative, you could also glue pink paper, gift wrap or felt to them.
  • Set aside to dry.
• BODY:
  • Wrap pink paper/gift wrap around Kleenex box.
  • You need to cover the top and all the sides.
  • Covering the bottom of the box is optional.
  • Adults with smaller children can prewrap the box like one would wrap a gift OR you can trace each side of the box onto the pink paper, cut out each traced piece and glue it to the box.
  • The tracing method doesn’t cover the box quite as neatly, but is easier for 3 year olds than wrapping would be. (Who says crafts have to be neat?)
• HEAD:
  • Print out the template of choice. Glue to cardboard if you want to make the template pieces sturdier.
  • Color and cut out the template pieces.  (Younger children may require assistance with the cutting, especially if you used cardboard.)
  • Glue the cotton ball to the snout (nose) and to the head. The cotton ball will be between the snout and the head.  This makes the snout stick out from the head to give a 3 dimensional effect.
  • Glue the small triangle to the large triangle to make ears. You can put glitter on the ears or replace the small triangles with triangles of pink felt.
  • Glue the eyes and ears to the head.
• ASSEMBLING THE PIGGY BANK
  • Glue the head to one end of the pig.
  • Tape or glue the feet to the bottom of the pig (I usually use a glue gun for this part, but tape works fine too).  If using toilet paper roll feet, you may want to cut 1/2 inch down 5 or 6 times to make tabs.  Fold down the tabs to give you a larger surface for gluing/taping.

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  • Slice the top of the pig open (where the kleenex comes out).  This is where you will put the money.
  • Optional:  Poke a hole in the back end of the pig with a pencil. Make a little ball at the end of the pipe cleaner.  Stick the unballed end into the kleenex box (through the hole you just sliced open) and stick it through the hole you poked with the pencil.  The balled end should keep it from going all the way through. Finally, twirl the pipe cleaner around the pencil to make a twisty pig tail.
  • Glue template bow (or make one of scraps of ribbon) to the pig’s head for a girl or under the chin for a boy.

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)