Wind Spinner Craft

We held our annual family reunion at Bear Lake in Utah.

Oh my! I’ve never seen the water so high!!

We have had several drought years. But this past winter brought an exceptional amount of snow. (There’s still lots in the mountains!)

As the snow has melted, our lakes and rivers have become full to the brim!

Last year, we had to walk about three blocks length to go from the parking lot to the edge of the water.

Not so this year!

There was about 12 feet of beach before you got to the water. It was amazing!

I had a fun craft for the grandkids to make at our reunion — wind spinners.

This is a great craft because you recycle plastic water bottles and because it’s an inexpensive craft.

Here are the items that you will need:

• an empty plastic water bottle for each grandchild
• permanent marking pens
• scissors
• kite string
• drill or very sharp pocket knife
• hot glue gun

Before I explain how we made these wind spinners, let me talk a little bit about the supplies. First. It helps if the plastic water bottle is dry on the inside. Water will smear the marking pens. (Voice of experience here . . .)

Next. Get marking permanent pens that are vivid in color. Pastel colors do not show up very good. Sharpie pens give good color. Also, get the broadest tip. Skinny ones makes for a long time of coloring. (Again, heed this voice of experience . . .)

Third. Before we left, I had my husband drill a tiny hole in the water bottle lids. I cut a piece of kite string and put it through the hole. I put a dab of hot glue to hold the string in place on the inside of the lid. After I had done that, I realized that I could have just hot glued the string to the top of the lid. That would be far easier than drilling holes in the lid. (Let’s do the easiest thing, okay?)

Fourth. Not all water bottles are created equal. Some have wavy lines around the bottle. Others don’t. The majority of my grandchildren liked bottles with wavy lines on them. I didn’t have enough for all of the grands that wanted them. My suggestion would be to have all of the same type of water bottles so nobody has a melt down — especially grandma! 🙂  (There’s that pesky voice of experience again . . .)

Okay. Now for the directions. Have your grandkids color the outside of their water bottle. They can color vertical designs or horizontal ones. They can color circles, flowers, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Whatever makes them happy is the best design for them!

Make sure they understand that their design will look different once the bottle is cut up. This will reduce melt downs. (Are you getting tired of me talking about the voice of experience??) If they drew flowers or circles, they might not show up as flowers or circles.

Here we are coloring water bottles. (Please ignore my ‘camping hair do’ and how goofy I look in a hat. Please!)

When the grandkids are happy with the design that they colored, cut the bottom off the water bottle.

Then, do a spiral cut from the bottom up to the neck of the bottle. (If your grandkids are little like mine, it would be best to have an adult do the cutting.)

If you cut a narrow width, the wind spinner will be long. If you cut a wider spiral width, the wind spinner will be short.

Screw the lid onto the water bottle. Because we were camping and the grandkiddos were not at their homes, I had them tie their wind spinner around a stick. They will tie it to a tree when they get home. That way, they can watch it spin in the wind.

It’s kind of hard to see the spinners. Click to see bigger pictures.

Spencer decided to wrap the string around his neck instead of a stick. Silly boy! But! You can see his spinner better . . .

Here’s the whole gang showing off their spinner.

Here’s a picture of my spinner hanging on a tree at my home. I cut the spiral in a narrow width. See how long it is?