Snotty Noses Happy Parents Raising Healthy Kids by Dr Orlena Kerek, Paediatrician

What are wind socks, you may ask. They are those things that you see at airports, those sock things that catch the wind and tell you which way it is going. A wind sock is like a little kite that you can run around with. This wind sock activity is a super quick way to make a little kite that your kids will love.

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I have a confession to make.

I have been dying, itching, waiting eagerly to do this activity.

I saw it in one of our books and thought it looked amazing. Except we didn’t have any tissue paper.

So when my mum bought some for the kids to cut up. I secretly hid it so it didn’t get used. (Craft products can be hard to come by here in Spain. She bought it in the UK.)

Those perfect coloured sheets of tissue paper. Bright colours, neatly folded paper, almost too good to cut up.

Just perfect for making wind socks.

This is such an easy activity that is suitable for all ages. The three year olds needed some help (and a gentle hand, they kept making holes in the paper but it didn’t really matter.) The older boys (aged nearly 6 and nearly 8) managed it by themselves.

You Will Need

• A sheet of colour tissue paper each.
• Some cardboard. We used old cereal packets.
• Some glue.
• Some sellotape in case you have really impatient kids who can’t wait for glue to dry. (Ahem.)
• Wax crayons.
• A stick.
• Some string.

How to Make a Fish Wind Sock

1. Cut a strip of cardboard a couple of cms wide (1 inch) from the longest length of your cereal packet. (This will become the mouth.)
2. Cut the tissue paper so that one edge is roughly the length of the strip of cardboard. (I just cut ours in half, it was a bit longer but I just had a bit of an over lap.)
3. Decorate your tissue paper with the wax crayons. Add eyes and scales, anything else that you fancy.
4. Glue the cardboard to the edge of the tissue and then down one edge of the tissue.
5. Fold the cardboard into a circle and press the glued edge of the tissue to the other edge of tissue. You’ve made a cylinder of tissue paper with the cardboard holding it open.
6. Wait for it to dry before attaching to a stick.
7. Cut the bottom half of the tissue (the bit away from the cardboard) into strips, until half way up so that the fish has “feathers”.

Now you’re ready to run around with your wind sock.

The three year old twins loved running around with the kites and trying to catch them. The older boys preferred to get the kites to catch the wind and fly.

The wind socks were such a big hit that they even came to the woods with us.

We all really loved making wind socks. OK. I have a confession to make, I loved making them the most and Celeste definitely loved carrying hers around for several days afterwards.

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