Hair Chopsticks

What You Need:

• 1 pair of wooden chopsticks
• Decorating acrylic paint
• Paint brush
• 1 sheet of newspaper

What You Do:

1. Let your child set a newspaper out on a large, flat surface. This will be her workspace.
2. Have your child squirt several piles of paint onto the newspaper. Encourage her to get messy -- as long as the mess stays on the newspaper!
3. What does she want her chopsticks to look like? Have her dip her paint brush into the paint piles on the newspaper and decorate her chopsticks however she wants. She can add just a few dots and stripes or coat the whole thing in a single color.
4. Allow the chopsticks to dry for several hours before continuing.
5. To use the now decorated chopsticks as hair accessories, have your child grab her hair as if she was going to make a ponytail.
6. Help your child tightly twist her ponytail clockwise from the roots of her hair to the tips.
7. Then, wrap the twisted ponytail into a tight bun on the back of her head.
8. Help your child pierce the first chopstick through the lower left hand corner of the bun, angling through the center, and out through the upper right hand corner.
9. Have your child repeat with the second chopstick, only angling from the upper left corner of the bun through the lower right corner instead.
10. This may take a bit of practice -- don't get discouraged! Once mastered, though, she'll have a nifty hairstyle held up by chopsticks she decorated herself.

There's no reason why your child should own just a pair of these beautiful accessories! Help her make more in  different colors and different styles to match all her favorite outfits.