Make your own StickMan Family with this kids motor-skills craft activity

Inspired by preparing for our latest autistic and neurotypical family visit to see Stick Man Live last week, Jane I set about making our own Stick Man Family by using up materials leftover from Christmas and delving into our craft box.

Well when I say craft box, I really mean a box crammed full of all sorts paper, stickers, feathers and you name it.  All thrown in no particular order. I find it leads to plenty of creativity when you don't know what you are going to pull out to make something with.

This fun craft activity was great for us. It helps all the kids with their imagination, creativity and motor skills development.  This is particularly helpful for our autistic sons who have poor motor skills and struggle to use their imagination.  And Jane just loves being creative!

We also used the activity as a way of preparing for seeing Stick Man Live.  We had a great time at the show, even though David tried to run onto the stage... twice(!). Theatres can be challenging for our family, see my article in the Yorkshire Post for more info.  David watched the promotion video many times including while we were sat in the theatre waiting for the show to start.  Anthony, our older son, looked at the social story that was produced for the show online - thank you guys!

The show was lovely, everyone did a great job and we got in and out of London, and even had pizza without too much drama.

To make your own Stick Man Family like ours you will need:

- Five cardboard tubes of various sizes (we used two kitchen roll tubes, two toilet roll tubes and a cut off from a cling film tube)
- Coloured paper if they want clothing (we used bits from the Christmas crackers)
- Stickers or paper circles for eyes
- green tissue paper or feathers
- colour pens
- scissors
- glue stick

1. Cut your tubes into Stick People.  Slightly flatten your tube and cut a thin triangle out from one end to give the stick person legs.  At the other end cut some slices around the end and bend over to make hair as you wish.  Then to make the arms cut one line from just below where the legs end at an angle to where you'd imagine the shoulder is.  Then bend the flap forwards.

If your child is doing the cutting you could draw on the tube where to cut to help and / or try some easigrip scissors too.

On our little stick baby we just drew arms on with a brown felt tip.  Repeat with all your tubes.  This will give your you stick family shapes.

2. Add a face.  We used white circles and drew on black dots with a black biro for all the eyes.  Felt tip pens were liberally used to make their smiley faces.  Jane gave Stick Man a rather funny mouth - maybe he was a bit lost?

3. Add clothes and leaves.  Grab some glue and add on any clothes you'd like.  We added belts and mini skirts from our leftover Christmas cracker paper.  We chopped up a few green feathers and used these for leaves too.

Finally stand back and admire your Stick Family.  Then play with them - yay!

When making the family, place the items around the table. This will encourage the child to cross their mid line - stretching their hands across the middle of their body to use them. All gluing and cutting will encourage bilateral motor skills (using two hands together) by holding the tube and then gluing with the other hand.

What do you think?  For more of our recent kids craft ideas click here

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We won our tickets at Stick Man Live via This Woman's World and were gifted an extra ticket from the producers so we could go as a family - thank you guys.  I hope you like our Stick Man Family.
Stick Man Live is currently touring until 12th January 2018.