School is about to begin for us, and I know it has already begun for many of you. This fun school bus craft made with popsicle sticks is the perfect thing to get your child excited about returning to school or riding the school bus for the first time. I absolutely fell in love with the craft when I saw it at Reading Confetti. I hope you’ll check out her version too. She did a couple things different, and her pictures of her son turned out better. I think my printer color was slightly off because the pictures were of much better quality when viewed on my computer. Are you ready for the tutorial?
Here are the different kind of popsicle sticks you need. You’ll want three larger ones that are more like a tongue depressor. You will then want 5 normal size popsicle sticks, 4 of which are trimmed off slightly. I was able to cut the top of with just plain old adult scissors.
Once your stick are all ready, your kids get to paint them yellow. I just used regular old craft paint.
Once dry, your kids can use craft glue to glue the three bigger sticks as pictured above.
To show my kids where to place the glue on the longer (non-cut) popsicle stick, I drew 4 black dots, evenly dispersed on the stick. They were then able to add the glue dots where needed.
I put another popsicle stick across from the one with glue dots. THIS ONE WILL NOT BE GLUED AT ALL. It is there just to have something to rest the shorter popsicle sticks on while they dry in place.
This is how the top of the bus looks as it is drying. Again, the bottom popsicle stick is not glued in place. It is just a resting stick to keep things level while it dries.
Once the top half and the bottom half of your bus are dry completely, you can glue them together as shown above. Abby was able to do all the gluing.
I cut out some black circles by tracing around a V8 lid onto black card stock. Abby glued on the jewels to the center of the tires. Once those were pretty dry, she was able to glue them onto the bus. She also glued down the jewel for a headlight. You can use buttons, beads, paper or anything you have on hand.
The final step was adding stickers onto the bus. I chose to write her name and grade.
This was one of those crafts that when I saw it, I fell in love with it and thought, “Aw! I wish I had come up with that idea. It’s brilliant.”
I’m adding this to the top of our crafty to-do list – love it!
I’m so glad you love this. It is just one of those happy crafts, isn’t it?
How cute is this?? Love it!!
Thanks so much, Meegan!
This is adorable!!
Thank you so much!
this is a wonderful back to school craft. thanks for sharing. Sharon popping by from WFMW
Thanks so much, Sharon. We had a lot of fun with this one!