Coral Reef Craft Using Coffee Filters

It’s a Wednesday morning and I’m writing this post over a cup of coffee. It’s another normal homeschool day around here. We sure do love the perks and pro’s that homeschooling brings to our family. One of the perks is if one or all of our boys takes a specific interest in something or we want to spend a little extra time learning about something, we can. There is no rush to move ahead, there is no pressure that we aren’t going to get to it all.

We have added something new to our homeschool this year for social studies. Along with their normal curriculum, we have the entire set of the Who Is/What Was series, and we’re reading them together and doing a project or two at the end of the book. They’re loving it!

The first book we read was “Who Was Walt Disney”. They are still talking about all the fun facts they learned about Walt from that book. At the end of that book, we watched one of the early Disney movies, “Swiss Family Robinson.” They LOVED it!

This week we just finished “Where is the Great Barrier Reef”. Again, they loved it! This time, we made a coral reef craft out of coffee filters (another fun Pinterest activity we’ve found – and thanks to StickasKids for the idea). My 11 year old sometimes thinks he’s a little old for these crafts the younger boys like, and he LOVED this one as well. This craft is easy, doesn’t require a ton of supplies (most of which you probably already have at home), and your kids will love it, I promise.

Supplies Needed:

• Coffee filters (between 18-30 per child)
• Food Coloring (Gel colors provide more vibrant colors)
• Large bowls with about 1 inch of water
• Wax paper
• Pipe cleaners

Easy to Follow Steps:

1. Squirt food coloring into each bowl of water and mix.
2. Dip a small stack of coffee filters into the water, curly side down. Pick them up from the flat sides of the filters when the color is almost to the top, and then set on them on your wax paper.
3. Let the filters dry overnight.
4. You can prep these by poking a hole with a toothpick (or a single hole punch) through each of the stacks of filters and making a little curl at one end of each pipe cleaner. Make sure to curl the ends so the pipe cleaners don’t fall off.
5. Next, string the filters. String one at a time.

Super easy, I’m telling ya. What fun {and easy} crafts are you doing this week?