7 crafty uses for your toilet paper rolls

So here is why we needed some toilet paper roll craft ideas...  Toilet training toddlers is a really super fun time – said no parent ever! Thankfully Freddy was pretty quick with his training and accidents were minimal. But with his new found toileting independence has come the desire to go it alone when it comes to using the bathroom.
This is great in theory but has on many occasions ended in giant messes. I’m not talking the disgusting bodily fluid type. I’m talking rolls and rolls of toilet paper spread over the room, usually when I’m feeding PJ his lunch or putting him down for a nap. Yes, I try to move them and put them down but he isn’t the only one in the house using the bathroom and they often get put back on the holder by people trying to be helpful… Needless to say, I have plenty of extra toilet rolls coming my way and am on the hunt to find crafty uses for them.
Just to recap I am not naturally arty or crafty at all. In fact I rely heavily on family members and friends to make sure my kids are getting their artistic fixes in life. But, in my defence I’m trying to up my game. Yesterday Freddy came out of the bathroom with two toilet rolls in hand. He placed them up to his eyes and told me he had to go outside to do some bird watching (WTF! where did he learn this??). So I put my trusty (read rusty) skills to work, got out the sticky tape and made a very quick and easy set of binoculars for him to play with. And so the hunt for toilet paper roll craft continues.

Binocular toilet roll craft:

Our binoculars consisted of toilet rolls and sticky tape, but if you want to get fancy check out these instructions… Love the suggestion from kinder art for adding a coat of paint. We might do this tomorrow to up our game.


The boys using their binoculars at our local cafe... kept them busy long enough for us to have a coffee.

Toilet roll snake:

We live next to the bush, so snakes feature pretty heavily in our discussions. We know there are plenty of carpet pythons around as we spot them regularly. As Freddy is a play outside kind of kid and he loves digging through the gardens and exploring we have had to talk to him about what to do when he sees a snake (get Mum - not Dad).  
So here is a nice and fun and friendly snake that we are going to make (and maybe even scare Daddy with).  

Easy Peasy and Fun toilet roll craft:

Toilet roll pencil organiser - cannot wait to try it. From Easy Peasy and Fun.

We haven’t tried any of these yet but we are obsessed with the activities we found on Easy, Peasy and Fun's website. Cannot recommend it enough and we will be checking in regularly. First on the list for us to try is the caterpillar pencil organiser. I’m going to save the unicorn craft for our next play date. The wind sock idea also sounds great. We often discuss the weather in the mornings and this can become part of our discussion. We can use it to talk about wind speed and direction but mostly it's fun and looks pretty.  Finally, the flower craft is a great opener for some free creative art. I like the idea of showing Freddy how to bend the circles to create other shapes. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.

Colouring toilet roll templates for bowling:

More animals to colour to make our bowling alley

Finally some colouring in craft. This one looks like the easiest of the lot and we are working our way through it as we speak. We decided to choose 6 animals to colour in (this means it will take us a week or so to finish). By choosing six animals we will then be able to play bowling with our finished creations. Yep, what a great use for toilet rolls… to play bowling. This is right up Freddy’s alley. We are going to turn our play mat in to a bowling alley for a quick game.

He couldn't leave the parrot alone long enough to colour the other animals playing on our blue geo play mat[/caption]
If you have any other suggestions of activities, we would love to hear them. We are always looking for fun and easy craft activities that we can do.