Christmas Balls

In the summer, @dominic_mcg described to me some poetry balls that he had seen.  I found a picture of them and filed it away on Pinterest for a later date.  Then earlier this week I was thinking about things to do with Year 6 over the next couple of weeks, bearing in mind that they have already done most of my Christmas stuff.  I remembered the poetry balls, and while my daughters were in the swimming pool this evening I had a go at making one.

Here are my instructions:

1.  Halve a piece of A4 card.  You'll end up with a piece of card 15cm x 21cm.

2.  Carefully measure and mark out 1cm strips, each 15cm long.  I started out with 21 strips, but found that was too many for one ball.  My ball on the left has 10 strips and the right one has 11 strips.  That's about the right number I think.

3.  Decorate each strip.  I wrote and illustrated Spanish Christmas words from my Spanish Christmas mat.  This will take the children some time!

4.  Using a single hole punch or the Blue Peter "sharp pencil into Plasticine" method, punch a hole in each end of each strip.  This needs to be done with care so that the holes are not on the edges of the strips.

5.  Cut the strips out and stack them in a pile.

6. Put a butterfly pin through the holes at each end.  (Check beforehand the the head of the butterfly pin is not smaller that the hole!)

7.  Carefully fan out the separate strips to make the ball shape.

It would be easy to fix a loop to the head of the butterfly pin with which to hang the ball.

UPDATE 27.11.15

Here's a template (2 to a sheet) to make it easier to make for those who might find the measuring tricky.

Christmas Ball Template