Moving Circus Craft

I'm so excited to share this craft with you. It started off as a small, quick art project but then I kept adding to it. I love how it turned out!

First we made the tent from a paper plate. We used the tutorial from Honey Bee Books. I was just going to leave it at that, but then I thought it would be fun if the kids could draw some circus activities inside the tent. I put a piece of white paper behind the tent and realized it was a pretty small area to draw in. Since the tents could not be any bigger, I came up with the moving circus! It took some trial and error, but once I figured out what I wanted to do, it was quick and easy. I took a big piece of white paper and folded it in half lengthwise. (The paper was thin, so I chose to keep it folded rather than just cut it in half. If you use construction paper, it's probably thick enough you could cut two from one large piece.) Then I took a big piece of black construction paper and made two slits that would mostly be hidden behind the sides of the tent. I slid the white paper through the slits. Here is what the back looks like:

On the front, I taped on the tent using one piece of tape at the top and one on each side, making sure it didn't stick to the white paper.

The paper plate naturally stuck out above the paper, which made it very easy to slide the white paper back and forth. To prevent people from pulling the paper all the way out, I wrote a little "STOP!" about an inch in from either side of the white paper.

When you pull the paper to the left or right, you'll see the STOP in the corner of the tent.

Whether that will really prevent people from pulling the paper all the way through, I don't know. But it was the best thing I came up with. When it was time for the kids to color in their circus activities, they started at one STOP and drew to the other STOP. They did this while the paper was in the tent so none of their drawings would be covered up by the top of the tent.

I got a little worried here that maybe this would be too much for them, drawing all the little details, but they did a great job!

And since we used black paper as our background, we decided it would be a night circus and added gold and silver foil star stickers.

Of course, you can see the paper and drawings on the sides of the black paper when it's pulled to the left or right, but there's really no way around that. The kids didn't seem to mind at all! They loved it as much as I did!

 (Love the lion getting ready to jump through the ring of fire!)

And after all that, I decided to add one more thing. I cut out semicircles on the sides of the black paper so the white paper is easier to grab. And I drew a double arrow on each side as well.

When I hang them up next week, I will put this note up so everyone knows how they work:

So, do you love it?!