Happy Friday! Happy July, too! And Happy Independence Day weekend! Wow, that’s a lot of happy wishes!

I know the 4^th of July holiday weekend brings a lot of fun-in-the-sun, but for that moment you need to take it inside for a bit, I thought I’d share an easy, tiny craft that T and I did together over Memorial Day weekend that translates well to the 4^th weekend just the same.

Construction Paper Flag

Materials:

Construction Paper, one-each of uniform-size pages of red, white, and blue

Glue Stick

If you have one, Small Star-shaped Rubber Stamp

One Household Sponge (If no rubber star stamp)

Scissors (to cut the paper and the sponge, if needed)

Sharpie Pen (to write on sponge, if needed)

White Non-toxic Paint (we used washable tempera)

Paper Plate (for the paint)

1. Decide to keep either red or white page whole and intact. You will use this horizontally as your flag base.
2. Cut seven full-length, horizontal strips from the other red or white piece not being left whole. Your height size will vary depending on scale of overall project; our strips measured somewhere around 1″ or so. Eyeball it like I did before cutting, no ruler necessary. These will be your flag stripes, so you will need 7 strips total, but you should have more strips if you cut the whole piece (that’s OK, save for another project, or decorate both sides!).
3. Cut a square from the blue paper piece that would fill the top right-hand 1/9^th of the whole piece of paper being used as base for flag.
4. Starting flush with the top of your flag base, arrange strips the long-way one at a time, leaving an equal amount of room between the strips as the size of the strip itself. Now you should see 13 alternating red and white stripes, and the top and bottom stripe should be the same color. If your count is off, trim down strips so everything fits.
5. When you have spacing just right, now glue on the strips as you have them arranged.
6. Glue blue box to top right-hand corner; this will cover some of the stripes in-part, but that’s OK. You should see the flag coming together now…
7. Pour small amount of paint on paper plate.
8. If you have a star stamp, dip in white paint and randomly dot stars in blue box (you probably won’t have room for 50 but if you do, go for it). Long may it wave!
9. (alternate to step 8 ) BUT If you don’t have a star stamp (like me), make your star stamp with a household sponge! Draw a star on a sponge with a sharpie pen then cut outline with scissors. It’s hard to keep a symmetrical star shape, or keep it super-small, but we managed (remember, my boy is just 3.5 years old so he didn’t care; however, I fully realize that older kids might balk at my crafting approach). Finally dip sponge stamp into paint and scatter stars in blue box (again, most likely not space for 50 but do what you can). Pledge allegiance.

To do both sides of flag, let first side dry, cut additional blue construction paper box (per step 3 above), and turn over. With your leftover stripe strips, you should be able to complete the second side, too. If not, repeat step 2 also to create more stripes. Then follow rest of above instructions EXCEPT remember to create the second side as a “mirror image” – meaning, the blue box will go in the top LEFT corner (so directly behind the front side’s affixed blue box).

To fly your flag, get a long, thin wooden stick or dowel, staple flag around stick along the blue-corner side, and go enjoy the parade!

Don’t want to mess with paint and have those old-school silver foil star stickers – or other similar star sticker – on hand? Gold star for you if so! Totally skip the paint part and use ‘em.

Here’s a photo of our finished project…

And here’s a photo of the star stamp we made…

I obviously helped – a lot. I admit it, I’m pretty sure I had more fun with this one than T did… but as you can see, exact measurement is not necessary. Just make it work!

Happy Independence Day! Have a safe and festive holiday weekend!