Crafty Mom: Windsocks for Memorial Day

I am excited about Memorial Day weekend. I have been trying my hardest to explain to my children what Memorial Day is really about.

I believe it is important to show our children that Memorial Day is about honoring the heroes of our nation and not just another three-day weekend.

Because I wanted them to understand that Memorial Day is about our American heroes, I wanted to make a craft that had to do with the American flag. I decided to make American flag windsocks with the kids.

This was an easy and fun craft, great for both younger and older kids.

An empty oatmeal container (or any cylinder container)

Red, white and blue construction paper

White glue

String

Wrap a solid piece of construction paper around the cylinder and glue it to the container. Fold the excess on the top down or cut it off.

Next cut out stars or stripes and glue them on to the cylinder.

Then cut the construction paper length wise into long strips.

You can put on the strips at the bottom in a few different ways. You can use the lid of the oatmeal container to hold them in place by folding them about an inch over the top of the container and put glue on the lid to hold them in place.

When you are done with that, fold the strips over in the opposite direction so that they will hang down.

Or you can glue each one on to the bottom by hand.

I used a U-shaped nail, or you can use a staple, and pushed it into the lid of the container and hung them up with fishing line.

If you are looking for an outdoors craft that will last, you can laminate the pieces first and use hot glue to hold them in place.