Crafting with my boys ~ Rain sticks

My rain stick.  I colored a white
strip of construction paper to add
to my decorations.

I've recently began pinning on Pinterest and have found lots of great crafts for the kids to do.  The boys and I made rain sticks the other day.  It was a relatively simply craft for us and lots of fun. 

I have been saving paper towel tubes to use for crafts and they came in handy.  I also had lots of strips of construction paper left over from a Girl Scout craft. 
We glued the strips of paper around our paper towel tubes to decorate them.  Then we taped on construction paper that was cut in a circle at the bottom of the tube. 
I pulled some cardboard out of the recycle to cut up and fold accordion style.  Then we put those and two tablespoons of rice in the tube, to make the rain sound.  To finish off our rain sticks we taped on the other circle on the top and added a little tape to the strips around the tube.  (The glue just didn't want to stay stuck)  For full directions please visit creativekidsathome.com were I found this neat craft.

Monkey showing off his rain stick.
He used blues for the rain and
yellow and orange for the sun.

Cookie seems to think his rain stick is some kind of ninja weapon.  He is twirling it around and around, so he doesn't really get a good sound out of it.  Monkey is more patient and gets good rain sounds from his.

~Earthy Mom

Cookie's rain stick has his favorite colors in a pattern.
Blue and yellow.