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How to make an Epic Toilet Paper Roll Giraffe Craft for Kids

Save your paper towel rolls because your kids are going to love making giraffe crafts out of them. This Toilet Roll Giraffe Craft is a fun craft for older kids, who love to get crafty and don’t mind a challenge.

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Table of Contents

  1. Other Zoo themed arts and crafts to try
  2. Materials needed
  3. Instructions
  4. What your kids are learning

More Zoo Animal Arts and Crafts to try

Do you have young children who love zoo animals? Try some of these other wild animal craft ideas, your kids will have lots of fun making these fun crafts.

  1. Paper plate lion craft
  2. Egg carton monkey
  3. Craft Stick Monkey
  4. Finger Puppet Giraffe Craft
  5. 3D paper giraffe craft

for more ideas, take a look at these 60 Zoo Animal Crafts for Preschool

Materials Needed

  1. 11 toilet rolls
  2. 1 tissue box
  3. 5 sheets of A4 yellow construction paper
  4. Brown paint
  5. Glue
  6. Scissors
  7. A pen
  8. Paper fasteners
  9. Googly eyes

How to make a Giraffe out of Toilet Paper Rolls

Make your brown spots

1. Use brown paint to paint spots all over your yellow paper.

Alternatively, you can use yellow paint and brown paint directly onto your cardboard tubes instead of using yellow paper. Which way you choose will depend on what materials you have and which method you think would work best for you.

Whether you’re going to paint the toilet paper tube yellow or use yellow paper, the first thing you are going to do is give your giraffe their trademark spots. It’s a lot easier to paint the giraffe’s spots first and assemble all the pieces afterwards.

2. Cover the rolls and tissue box

If you’ve painted directly onto your toilet rolls, you can skip this step.

I found that one A4 size paper, cut into quarters, is the perfect size for covering one toilet roll.

Cover nine separate toilet rolls. Eight for the legs, and one for the head. For the giraffe’s long neck, I covered two toilet rolls at the same time. Instead of using A4 quarters, use half a sheet of paper instead so that the two rolls used for the neck will be joined together.

Assemble the legs

3. Set aside 8 of your decorated loo rolls. 4 will be the lower leg, and the other 4 will be the upper leg.

4. To assemble the lower legs so that they can move, you’re going to start by making a knee joint. Firstly, take a hole punch and on one end of the toilet roll, punch two holes. The holes need to be facing opposite each other because this is the point where the upper and lower legs will join.

5. The next step is to cut two semicircles out of the top of the toilet roll, but ensure that you leave enough room around each of the holes so that it is still stable. These semicircles give the legs room to move, the deeper the circle, the more range of motion the leg will have. But keep in mind not to make too deep a circle, because then the leftover tag won’t be able to support the weight of the entire giraffe on top of it.

6. Repeat these steps 4 and 5 for four of the toilet rolls.

7. For the remaining four toilet rolls, you’ll need to make two holes in both the bottom and top ends of the roll. Once again, put each hole at the opposite end of the opening, just like in the pictures.

8. To join the upper and lower legs together, place the tags from the lower legs inside the upper legs until the two holes match up. Secure these holes together using a paper fastener.

9. Repeat step 7 and 8 for all four legs.

Assemble the neck and head

Assembling the giraffe’s head and neck is much less tricky than the legs. You’re going to use the last remaining 3 of your empty toilet paper rolls for this part of the project.

10. For the head, start by cutting a semicircle out of one end of the toilet paper roll.

11. Save this semicircle because you’re going to cut it into small pieces that will be used to make the ears and to help attach the head to the neck.

Draw a cross on the backside of the semicircle like in the picture. The two rectangles will be glued to the inside of the toilet roll neck and the head. Alternatively, you can punch another hole in the rectangle cardboard and the head so that the neck joint moves and the giraffe can nod.

12. Cut out the ears and glue them onto the toilet roll head.

13. As a final touch, I drew two eyes for the giraffe and glued them onto the head. However, you can use white dot stickers or googly eyes if you prefer.

Put them all together to make your toilet roll giraffe

14. To connect the legs to the tissue box, you’re going to start by drawing a circle on the underside of the tissue box.

I traced around one of the toilet rolls to make sure it was the right size for the leg to fit. However, when you cut out the circle, you need to leave two rectangular tags (as in the pictures) large enough to punch a hole through.

These rectangular tags are where you are going to join the legs to the tissue box with paper fasteners. Using the same process you did with the knee joints.

15. Repeat step 13 for all four legs.

16. Turn your box over and draw another circle on the top of the box that is large enough for the giraffe’s neck to fit into.

With this step I did not make rectangular tags as I had with the legs. Instead I just cut a complete hole so that the neck of the giraffe was able to swivel from side to side.

17. Enjoy playing

What You’re Learning

This is a huge project that is filled with learning potential in multiple areas. Some of the things your older kids are going to learn include:

Creativity

Arts and crafts are a great way to use your imagination and then create something that represents that idea in the real world. This is important not only for artistic pursuits, like painting or music, but also for problem solving. Which is an essential life skill that everyone needs to develop.

Some ways your kids may want to create their own unique giraffe can include:

  1. Changing the color scheme. Maybe they want a giraffe with rainbow spots instead of only brown.
  2. Draw funny faces onto your giraffe

Planning and Organization

This toilet roll giraffe craft has several steps that need to be done in a specific order for this sculpture to work. For example, you need to cut out the joints of the giraffes legs first, before attaching them together.

Organizing the required materials beforehand, as well as planning out each step before you do it, is a great way for kids of all ages to strengthen their executive functioning skills.

Science

This is a great opportunity to talk to your children about some biology. Discuss all the amazing things you know about giraffes, like:

  1. What they eat
  2. Where they live
  3. How they move
  4. How they drink water (google this one if you haven’t already cause it looks fascinating)
  5. Any other fun facts that you know

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills refer to the small muscles in the hand and fingers. Developing these skills are important in being able to write when the kids go to school, as well as being able to complete tasks independently. (For example, dressing and feeding themselves).

Cutting the toilet paper rolls, using a hole punch and using paper fasteners are all going to help young kids develop:

  1. Pincer grip
  2. Hand-eye coordination
  3. Dexterity.

Are you going to make a toilet paper roll giraffe craft withy our kids?
Don’t forget to pin the idea for later.

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