Do I hear rain???

Today we finished our mailing tube rain stick. This was another craft that I had discovered on http://www.familyfun.com. I have a roll of Con-tact paper from our collage project and was looking for more activities involving it.

This project started last week when we painted.
This weekend, the paint is dry and the con-tact paper has been carefully wrapped around it. We are ready to complete the inside. First thing we had to do was roll out a piece of aluminum foil. Gavin loved the shiny, crinkly, noisy material. It made him laugh. We crushed it lengthwise into a long cylinder.

Gavin enjoyed whipping the long piece of foil all around. Who knew it would be so exciting. After some fun waving around of the foil, it was time to wrap it around a broom handle to make a coil.

Alas, we have what resembles a spring! This was pretty exciting too. Gavin helped to stretch the coil out a bit so it would slide down the inside of the mailing tube. He first attempted this by using his teeth, that could not possibly have felt right, yet he didn't seem to mind. I wish I knew what he was thinking sometimes.

The last step was to pour some rice and uncooked corn into the tube. Mommy had to help with this part so we didn't have little pieces everywhere. The dogs would not have been eager to clean up that spill. Gavin did watch closely though. He reached out to catch some of it too.

Now we just need to super-glue the ends so that we don't have any accidents later, but someone was too eager to shake it immediately. I will let you now that when shaken, the nose made, is nothing even close to resembling rain. I tested it a few minutes later to see if when tipped back and forth I heard rain......well, kinda.... Regardless of the outcome, we did have fun making it AND we have something new that makes noise!