The Naughtiest Reindeer craft

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Have you read The Naughtiest Reindeer? Each year I like to buy my kids a new Christmas book to read aloud and last year this one was it. It had as all laughing our heads off and quickly became one of our favourites.

Poor Rudolph is stuck in bed with a runny nose and an ache in his head so the very important job of pulling the Christmas sled goes to his sister Ruby – but is Ruby up to the task?

“Pulling the sled wasn’t really much fun,
it was packed full of toys but she couldn’t have one,
and while Santa went in and had cookies to eat,
she had to wait fidgeting out in the street.

“I’m bored” grumbled Ruby,

Then she had an idea.”

What happens next? You’ll need to read the book to find out but here is a character craft that you can make of Ruby the Naughtiest Reindeer in the meantime.

You will need:

• a paper towel roll
• a cereal box
• masking tape
• a permanent marker (like a sharpie)
• a roll of brown kraft paper
• a glue stick
• construction paper in black, red and white (card stock recommended)

How to:

1. Cut your cardboard tube into two pieces, one piece needs to be a bit shorter for the head and you’ll be left with a longer one for the body
2. Cut cardboard strips from your cereal box. Mine are 4cm wide (unfolded) and approx 13cm long for the legs and 11cm long for the neck. Fold the cereal box strips in half to make them stronger, secure with masking tape and wrap each one in a piece of brown kraft paper. Glue the kraft paper on with your glue stick.
3. Draw hooves on four of your strips and cut to shape.
4. Staple the legs into a ‘V’ shape as shown in the collage below, then attach them to each end of the longer cardboard tube (the body).
5. Cover one end of the shorter cardboard tube with kraft paper to make the snout, and then tape the neck to the other end of this piece and attach the opposite end of the neck to the body
6. Wrap the tubes in kraft paper to cover the masking tape and glue down with your glue stick.
7. Sketch a reindeer antler shape onto your black construction paper, fold it over and cut out so that you end up with two antlers exactly the same. 
8. Cut ears from scraps of kraft paper and glue these onto your reindeer at the back of the head along with the antlers.
9. Cover the place where the antlers are glued on with a circle of kraft paper and do the same to the back end of the body.
10. Sketch eyes, a mouth, a nose and a tail, cut them out and glue on.
11. Finally, cut thin strips of red construction paper to create the harness and glue into place.

Ta da!

Now you have a cute (but very naughty) paper reindeer by the name of Ruby.

This year Ruby is staring in some new adventures too. They are The Naughtiest Reindeer at the Zoo and The Naughtiest Reindeer Goes South and are on our list for Christmas.

This craft idea is part of the 30 Christmas Craft + Book Ideas For Children blog hop! Check out the other fun Christmas book crafts over at Emma Owl.

More reindeer craft ideas

• Make a paper bag reindeer hobby horse
• Make some cute toilet roll reindeer
• Make a cute reindeer sculpture out of pasta and pipe cleaners
• See our roundup of Reindeer crafts for even more ideas

We have a HUGE number of ideas on our Christmas Crafts board on Pinterest also.

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