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Paper plate coconut tree craft

A fun coconut tree craft, inspired by one of our favourite alphabet books.

If you have a young child in your life who is working on learning the alphabet, you may well be familiar with the brilliant book ‘Chicka Chicka Boom Boom’ (written by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert).

It’s a total classic.

A tale of the various letters of the alphabet racing each other to the top of a coconut tree (and then falling off when it gets rather crowded).

My kids love this book and, as a parent, I also love reading it. The words rhyme, it has a great rhythm to it and it’s such a fun way to reinforce the letters of the alphabet.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is therefore the inspiration behind today’s craft.

It’s a coconut tree, just like the one from the book, entirely made from one paper plate.

It’s pretty simple to make and you’ll only need a few things in order to get started (a paper plate being the main one!).

Ready to get crafting? Then read on for the step by step instructions.

What you will need

  • paper plate
  • paint (yellow, brown, green)
  • white glue
  • scissors

How to make your coconut tree

Step 1

First you’ll need to cut out the island part of your craft from your paper plate. Draw first in pencil and then cut along the line.

Your island should be about a third of your paper plate, like so:

(Of course, if your child is young and still working on their cutting skills, you can adapt this first ‘cutting out’ stage – for example, you might want to draw lines on the plate for them to cut along, or you may in fact want to have the different parts of the craft pre-cut in advance so they can just enjoy the painting and assembling stages.)

Step 2

Next, across the widest part of the remaining paper plate, cut a long thin strip for the tree trunk.

Make your tree trunk slightly wider at the bottom than the top.

Step 3

To make the leaves for the coconut tree, you’ll want to cut longish triangles out of the remaining paper plate. (Depending on the age of your child and their cutting skills, you may want to cut the triangles for them so they can get going with the painting).

We cut 6 triangles altogether.

Step 4

Out of the remaining bits of paper plate (or you can just use paper or cardstock if you’ve run out of plate!), cut two or three circles for the coconuts. The coconuts we cut out were about 1 inch across.

You should now have all the different parts of your coconut tree craft and be ready to put it all together.

All parts of coconut tree craft cut out and ready to assemble

Step 5

Next, it’s time to paint everything!

You’ll want yellow for the sand at the base of the tree, brown for the trunk and the coconuts, and green for the leaves.

Step 6

Now comes the assembly part.

Start by attaching the base of the tree trunk to the yellow sand. Put glue on the bottom of the tree trunk and stick behind the sand.

To attach the leaves use lots of white glue. Start by putting a big blob of white glue onto the top of the trunk. Stick the first couple of leaves on and press down really firmly. Then add more glue on top of these leaves to stick the others on to. You’ll want to be generous with the white glue as the leaves overlap a fair bit in the centre.

Don’t worry too much if the centre where the leaves are all stuck down looks a bit messy or gluey – we will cover this part up with the coconuts shortly (phew!)

Step 7

And lastly, glue the coconuts onto the coconut tree. Ideally, glue these so they cover the centre of the tree where the leaves are all glued on.

Completed coconut tree craft

And there’s your finished coconut tree craft! Pretty cool, given that it’s entirely made from just one paper plate, no?!

If you’ve got paper plates to spare, why not check out our other paper plate crafts (great for little ones). Try starting with our paper plate cat, paper plate pig or paper plate donkey. For little ones, perhaps start with our super simple paper plate ladybug.

Thanks for stopping by The Craft Balloon today. I hope you enjoyed this coconut tree paper plate craft.

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