🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop

• ♻️ Environmental Thinking — Using natural or recycled materials in crafts begins to develop awareness that materials have a life beyond their original use — an early foundation for environmental stewardship and sustainable thinking.
• 📋 Planning & Sequencing — Multi-step craft projects require children to think about what comes first, next, and last — building the procedural sequencing skills that underlie reading comprehension, mathematics, and everyday problem solving.
• 💪 Persistence & Resilience — Working through a craft that doesn't go as planned, fixing mistakes, and persisting to completion teaches children that effort — not talent — produces results, a mindset that predicts lifelong learning.
• 🌿 Sensory Exploration — Handling varied craft materials — soft fabric, rough sandpaper, smooth clay, scratchy burlap — builds sensory discrimination and supports the processing skills that some children need additional practice with.

This symbolic Preschool Toilet Tissue Tube Friendship Stick can be given to anyone your preschooler wishes to express friendship towards. The colors at the top of the tube represent the elements of the earth, brown for the soil, yellow for the sun, green for plant life, blue for water, red for fire and for heart or feeling. The colors of the bottom half represent the rainbow that brings us all together. The Preschool Toilet Tissue Tube Friendship Stick can be given just as it is, or a note can be rolled up and placed in the center.

Materials You will Need

Empty toilet tissue tubes
Markers, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and brown
Paper punch
Yarn
White paper cut to 4 1/2 inches by 6 3/8 inches. (optional)
Glue (optional)

Step 1:
(Optional adult step) Toilet tissue tubes tend to be brownish or grey and yellow marker doesn’t show well. To make sure the yellow shows, you can clue white paper to the toilet tissue tubes an let it dry before you give them to the kids to color.  You can skip this step if it’s too much trouble, but it does make the stick look nicer.

Step 2:
Draw a line around the middle of the tube to divide it in half.

Step 3:
Color one half of the tube with five stripes, one brown, one yellow, one green, one red, one blue. Make each stripe go all the way around the tube.

Step 4:
On the other half of the tube, color six circles in this order; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.

Step 5:
Punch two holes opposite one another on the top end of the tube.

Step 6:
Thread yarn through so the friendship sticks so it can be worn as a necklace.

Step 7:
If you want to use them to carry a note, make a circle of construction paper and glue it to the bottom to keep the note from falling out.

Alternate Method of Making Friendship Sticks

If you do not have toilet tissue rolls or just prefer not to use them, you can also have your preschooler color the large, tongue depresser type craft sticks.

Materials You Will Need

Large craft sticks
Metal pin backs
Glue that will stick to metal

How to Make It

Step 1:
Color in the same way as the Preschool Toilet Tissue Roll Friendship Stick.

Step 2:
Glue a pin back on the back of the stick. Let it dry completely

Suggestions for Preschool Toilet Tissue Roll Friendship Sticks

Suggestion 1:
Hold a neighborhood potluck and let your preschooler pass them out to friends who attend.

Suggestion 2:
Ask your preschooler whom s/he would like to express special friendship or appreciation to and have him/her make friendship sticks especially for them. Include a note of appreciation or friendship.

Suggestion 3:
Use the tubes to hold the invitations to your neighborhood meeting or potluck. Shorten the yarn and hang the tubes from your neighbors’ doorknobs.

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I'm Margaret Studer, the Preschool Crafts writer for PreschoolRock.com. In addition to crafts, I enjoy writing, children, cooking, and cats. I love to hear from my readers, so please share your preschool craft ideas with me. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or questions about this site, please contact me.

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