Three Kings Craft

A fun craft to do around Christmastime is to make a luxurious set of kings. You start with toilet paper tubes. Make sure you have gorgeous materials. If you don't have beautiful fabric like velvet or silk, you could buy some from a scrap table at a fabric store for cheap. You want gold trim for the bottom of the kings' robes. Fluffy white material would also be nice. Gold ribbons were used by some of my children, too. Gold paper might be useful for the crowns, as well as small fake jewels, thick gold rope, and thin gold rope for belts. You will want brown construction paper and markers. A hot glue gun and tape will also come in handy.

First of all, you will want to make the face. Grab the brown construction paper and cut it one and a half inches wide. Then wrap the construction paper around the toilet paper tube and glue or tape it down along the top half of the tube. If you are making complicated facial features, you might want to draw the face in pencil first. Then go over the lines with marker. My oldest son made wrinkles on each of the kings. I guess he assumed that if the kings were wise, they must be old. You can also use google eyes for a cartoon-like effect.

Next you will make the main part of the body. You need a luxurious fabric. Hot glue works best as far as gluing down the fabric to the toilet paper tube. Make sure the fabric is glued down nice and tight. Then use a gold rope for the belt. You can make frills along the top and bottom with thin gold ribbon, thick gold rope, or even fluffy, feathery material. Buttons or fake jewels can decorate the kingly robes.

The crowns can be cut from shiny gold paper. Or you can cut crowns out of the fabric that you have. One of my children wanted color-coordinated crowns that matched the kings' outfits. For example, a dark red robe would coordinate with a dark red crown of the same material. After the kings are finished, you can read the story of the three kings bringing their treasures to Jesus. You can have them travel a long ways to get to the nativity scene that you presumably have in your home at Christmastime. Another fun idea is to make a star out of shiny gold paper. Have one child run around with the star, and all the wise men have to follow the star wherever it goes. Be careful not to crush the wise men during this riotous activity. Of course, you would need to finish the journey at the nativity scene. When they arrive, they need to give Jesus treasure. You could pretend, or you could make three treasures in three tiny boxes... Need more ideas for Christmastime? Come check out my powerpoint audio here.