Today we are joining in Read It Make It Books & Crafts Week! I chose the story of The Gruffalo because it is such a fun story, with lots of rhyming and such a cute storyline. Best of all, the characters are great to make into props, props from recyclables!
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I wanted to use recyclables to fit with our theme this month of recycling, upcycling, repurposing etc. in support of Earth Day. I grabbed some cardboard rolls, a box and markers. 
First, I made the animals by bending and cutting the rolls as shown below. Then I used a marker to draw the features of each character. I am not the most arty person, but this is really not difficult at all. I kept the book next to me and used it as reference.
One could leave the characters like this, but I wanted some colour so I used the colour markers to colour it in: 
The box I left blank for the kids to decorate. You can of course let your kids colour the characters too(I didn’t trust mine with it though, but if they want to make their own, they could)!
My son was keen on colouring the box!
To extend: add real leaves, rocks, wood chips etc. to the box and play like with it as a woodlands small world! 
A fun craft and story props to go along with the popular The Gruffalo story!
Check out these fun Family Spoon Puppets and Farm Animal Puppets!
If you do not have a copy of this book yet, here is the Amazon link for it:
I LOVE story props! They really bring the story alive!! What a wonderful set of recycled characters!
We love this story – how much fun it will be to act it out with props!