B is for Bear Craft: Buttons and a Balloon

My three year old daughter loves going on bear hunts. She will round up all the older kids at church and convince them to go on bear hunts with her. So, when it came to making a craft starting with B, a bear was an obvious choice. With our A is for alligator craft, we started a fun trend of making our alphabet crafts with materials starting with the same letter. So, we made our B is for bear craft from a balloon and some buttons.

How to Make a B is for Bear Craft Using Craft Supplies Starting With B

Materials:

• Balloon (preferably brown)
• Sharpie
• Buttons (7 brown and 2 white)
• White glue

Making the Bear:

To start, I blew up a brown balloon. My daughter desperately wants to be able to blow up balloons. So, I gave her a second balloon to try to blow up while I prepped things. The buttons I had on hand were pretty small, so I didn’t blow my balloon up very big. Once I tied it off, I drew a B around the tied neck with a Sharpie. I thought that using the tied off part as the bear’s nose would be cute. Yes, I had to look up the parts of a balloon to figure out what to call the thing you tie.

Then, I gave my daughter buttons to glue onto the balloon. I gave her two white buttons for the eyes, two light brown buttons for the ears, and four dark brown buttons for the feet. I showed her where to put the buttons and she put them around there. When my daughter finished placing all the buttons, it kind of looked like a bear, but not quite. I think that our buttons were on the small side for the size of a balloon, so the buttons I linked to above are bigger. Hopefully they work better for your B is for bear craft.

Decorating the Bear:

After the glue dried, I went and decorated the buttons. I drew claws on the top two paws and pads on the bottom two paws. I had already given the white buttons pupils before my daughter glued them on. It now looked more like a bear, but it was still off.

Then, I drew a nose and mouth on one last button and glued it to the balloon. This was the final piece that made it look much more like a B is for bear craft.

Conclusion of Our B is for Bear Craft

To be honest, I am a little disappointed in this craft. But, that is all my fault. Since I didn’t know what I was doing, I tried too many things on my own and didn’t let my daughter help as much as I should have. I should have waited until she woke up from her nap and had her help me decorate the bear. I also could have let her use a pump to blow up the balloon a different way. Thankfully, she still had fun gluing buttons to a balloon and likes seeing her bear balloon sticky tacked to a shelf in our dining room. I will make sure not to make the same mistake in future crafts.

If you are looking for a different take on this B is for bear craft, you could do it with beads instead. Beads also start with a B and we have “colored” pictures with them before.

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