Tent Craft Inspired By “There’s No Such Thing”

Are you looking for a fun craft to make with your children for Book Week? This tent craft was inspired by one of this year’s CBCA shortlisted Early Childhood books, “There’s No Such Thing,” written and illustrated by Heidi McKinnon.

Bear can’t sleep. Did you hear that? Did you feel that? What was it? It wasn’t a hungry giant or a blood-sucking spider or a fire-breathing dragon because there is NO SUCH THING… Is there?

In this heart warming and fun story, Bear and Teddy are camping. But Bear is worried about the things going bump in the night. Luckily, Teddy is there to reassure him, that everything is not as scary as it seems… Today we are going to make our own campsite, using lots of colourful paper and some popsicle sticks.

To make your campsite you will need the following craft supplies:

Supplies

2 Popsicle sticks
Colour/patterned paper
Black paper
PVA glue
Gluestick
Scissors
Greylead pencil
Colour pencils/felt tip pens/gel pens

Step 1

Put up your tent! To create your tent, choose a colourful or patterned piece of paper. Lay your popsicle sticks on the paper to create a template. Trace the bottom triangle created by the sticks. Using scissors cut out the triangle, and then cut the triangle in half, to create the two tent flaps. Put a stripe of glue down the outer edge of each tent flap and stick them to the middle of the black paper. Make sure the tent flap can lift up from the centre of the tent. Just like a lift-the-flap in a picture book. Using PVA glue, stick the two popsicle sticks to the edges of the tent. I overlapped my sticks at the top.

Step 2

Create your campsite! To create your campsite draw and cut out lots of different shapes on your coloured paper. You might like to include: trees, plants and grasses, nocturnal insects and animals, campfires, the moon and stars or some ‘scary’ creatures from the story. And don’t forget to make someone or something to put in your tent. You might even like to put yourself in the picture.

Step 3

The final step! Glue all your colourful shapes to the black paper, to create a not so scary night time scene. Feel free to add in any smaller details with colour pencils, felt tip pens or gel pens.

And here’s a close up of my campsite! I hope you have lots of fun making yours!

My kids and I loved making them. Here is what they created. Don’t they look great! My son hid a lantern in his tent and my daughter added a teddy bear.