Cupcake Liner Jellyfish

I absolutely love the coffee filter jellyfish we've done in past years, but I wanted to do something different this year. I had a big stack of cupcake liners that were all different colors so I decided to use those. We actually made two crafts because the first one didn't really satisfy me enough. It just didn't turn out how I had imagined, so we made a second craft. I'll show you both. For the first one, the kids used oil pastels to make an under-the-sea picture. Then they glued curling ribbon to the back of a cupcake liner that was cut in half. And then they glued the liner to their picture. I curled the ribbon with a scissors.

I liked it better before curling it, but the strands of ribbon were soooo long, it looked silly against the blue paper. And if I cut them short enough, then they weren't really curly anymore. So I curled them myself, felt a little disappointed, and decided to make another jellyfish craft with them. And this one only took seconds for the kids to make. I cut a ton of strands of ribbon and the kids glued them to the inside of a cupcake liner.

And that's it!

I only had five kids that day, so I let each one make a few. Then I hung them from the lights in our room.

I didn't curl the ribbon with a scissors this time. I let them hang naturally and I love how they looked! Some hung a little low, but the kids liked that because they told anyone who touched it that they got stung by a jellyfish!

Fun Fact: If a jellyfish is cut in half, each half can regenerate parts, thus making two new jellyfish.

Coffee Filter Jellyfish

"What ocean animal has no brain, no heart, no bones, no eyes, and no ears?" That's how I always start off teaching about jellyfish. It's fun listening to the children's responses! On Monday, we made our own Jewels of the Sea. The kids started off by coloring a coffee filter.

Then before spraying it with water, I put another coffee filter underneath. The color transferred to the second filter.

When dry, the kids glued on strips of crepe paper to the middle of one of the filters. (I cut the crepe paper into thinner strips. You could also use tissue paper.)

I also found some shiny ribbon so I cut that up as well.

When they were done gluing those on I stapled it to the other coffee filter and stuffed it with some toilet paper!

They are now hanging from our ceiling, looking absolutely beautiful!

The kids pretend their parents are getting stung when they brush up against them at drop-off and pick-up!

We also made very simple jellyfish by coloring the top part and adding curling ribbon. I hung those on our wall next to our sharks.

Fun Fact: Although jellyfish don't have eyes, some have eye spots which can detect light.

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