Paper plate moose
A fun paper plate moose craft, complete with handprint antlers.
Given that I’m currently located in Canada, it would seem wrong not to include a moose in our paper plate animal series.
I’ve only ever seen a moose once – from the car window whilst driving in Ontario. I was thrilled to see the moose. I’m not sure the moose felt the same way about me.
In homage to the moose I once met very briefly all those years ago, today’s craft is a moose face with handprint antlers. It’s pretty easy to make and only uses a few materials, the most important of course being the paper plate.
If you want to create this moose at home with your kids, check out the step by step instructions below. My preschooler really enjoyed this one – especially making the antlers.
Let’s get cracking.
What you will need
- paper plate
- brown paint
- brown cardstock or cardboard
- wiggly eyes
- black marker
- scissors
- tape and glue
How to make your paper plate moose craft
Step 1
First of all, paint your paper plate. We used a nice dark brown, acrylic paint (we find the acrylic paints cover the shiny paper plate pretty well). If you’re using with young children, do make sure you get a child-friendly, non-toxic paint.
We needed to do two thin coats of paint to cover the plate without there being any white peeking through.
Step 2
Whilst your paint is drying (ours only took about 10 minutes), it’s time to turn your attention to the antlers.
We wanted to use handprint shapes to make the antlers, but one handprint per antler would have been too small (moose antlers are HUGE!).
So we actually used 4 handprint cut-outs to make the antlers – two on each side.
For the anters, use brown cardstock, or if you don’t have any (like we didn’t), you could use the cardboard from a brown cardboard box if you have one lying around (which we did – hoorah!).
Help your child draw around their hands twice and cut out all 4 hand-prints.
To make each antler, glue one hand print on top of the other like so:
Step 3
Once your paper plate is dry, cut two strips off each side of the plate to make the ears.
You will want to cut the strips so that it leaves an hourglass shape for the moose’s head like so:
Trim the two ear strips so they look more like the shape of a moose ear.
Then tape the two ears on the back of the moose’s head.
Step 4
Next, stick on the wiggly eyes. If you don’t have any wiggly eyes, you can just use white paper circles and draw the black pupil on with a marker.
Step 5
Now it’s time to attach the two antlers. We used tape to attach these to the back of the paper plate. I must admit, having used thick cardboard-box cardboard, this part required quite a lot of tape. (If you use a thinner cardstock, I imagine it will be much easier to attach the antlers).
To finish, add two black marks for nostrils and a smile as well if you want.
And your paper plate moose craft is done!
If your child enjoys paper plate crafts, don’t forget to check out the other paper plate animals in our series, such as our paper plate pig, paper plate cat and paper plate donkey.
If you want to make this moose craft at home with your kids, why not pin it for later?
