Add Animal Fun to Paper Straws

On Tuesday I asked you to add a little fun to your food. Now I’m encouraging you to add a little drama to your drinks with this Animal Straw printable.  I wanted to make drinking water more fun for my children (and yours), but there’s a catch. I don’t like plastic straws and I don’t encourage you to go out and buy plastic straws.

I don’t have a problem with the hard plastic straws that you can use over and over again but to help our oceans and to reduce landfill, please say no to disposable straws that come with drinks at your local food outlets.

How to make paper straws

I found this method of making paper straws great but instead used plain white (recycled) paper because I wasn’t keen on the printer colour leaking into my children’s mouths. I also twirled the paper around a pencil and that worked fine.  To add a bit of colour to the straws, I just painted them with a little bit of food colouring.

Yes, a paper straw isn’t as long lasting as a disposable straw, eventually they do soak up the water and brake as a result but we generally only use them for one drink, don’t we?! There are quite a few businesses reverting to paper straws to help the environment too, so you could take a couple of extra paper straws home if you find them.

Print out the Animal Straw Fun Printable

Now it’s time to print out the Animal Straw Printable and add a little excitement to your children’s drinks. Print out the sheet and stick it onto some thin cardboard (we used a cereal packet), then wait for it to dry and cut each animal out. I used a single hole punch to punch through the place where the straw will sit.  Put the straw through the hole in the animal and secure it with blu-tac or sticky tape. There you have it, animal additions to your paper straws!

Click on the image to download the print out.

Let your child watch themselves in the mirror when they are drinking, or take a photo to show them what they look like. You can see it was hard for me to get a good picture of Squeak and Purr because they were happily making the sounds of the animals whilst drinking (and moving too much as a result). Miss Poss loved her printout and loved seeing the photos of her with a shark mouth. Here are some more follow up activities you can use to make the Animal Straw Printout even more fun and educational!

Follow on activities 

• You can make this activity a guessing game for your child. Put the straw mask on (without them seeing what animal it is) and then get your child to ask you a series of yes and no questions to help them guess their animal.
• Ask your child what animal they are and then discuss how much they know about that animal.
• Learn more about the animal they decide to use for their paper straw.
• Ask your child to make expressions like the animals when they are hunting, sleeping and cranky.
• Ask your child to make the sounds of their animal through the straw.
• These would also be great for an animal party or a play date.