Home > Crafts for and with Kids > Plastic Bottle Windsock

Plastic Bottle Windsock

We’re fascinated by the weather and watching it – seeing how the wind blows is fun especially with the trees in autumn and winter as the leaves blow and the bare branches move in the wind however in summer and spring it’s less easy to see so we created a simple windsock from a plastic bottle.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

Materials needed for windsock

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

Plastic Bottle
White Glue
Water
Tissue Paper – we used primary colours to make it colourful
Ribbons
Hole puncher

How to make the windsock

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

I started off by cutting off the top and the bottom of the plastic bottle so that it made a sleeve that would be the body of the windsock – the bits that I removed are proving very useful to keep the snails off some of our seedlings in the garden.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

We mixed together white glue and water in equal parts as this provides a great solution for using on plastic and provides a water proof coating similar to modge podge. We then tore up tissue paper into smaller squares.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

Coating the plastic sleeve T then applied the tissue paper – as she applied the tissue paper we talked about the colours made using primary colours helped with this.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

I love the way that by using a plastic bottle we get a stained glass effect when the tissue paper is added and the sun shines through it and as we dried it out in the garden it really caught the sun.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

Once dry we set to punching holes in it. I’ve got a punching kit and T used the hammer whilst I held the punch as our normal hole punch can’t managed to punch through plastic. At one end we punched 3 holes.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

The other end we punched out holes about every 1.5 cm these are where the ribbon will thread through. I had cut the ribbon into long lengths and then T threaded them through the holes at the end – we used a mix of different width and material ribbons to create an interesting effect.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

Once she had threaded the ribbons into one end I threaded the ribbons in the other end joining them together in the middle to form a handle for the wind sock.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

Before we could put up the windsock of course it was perfect for twirling and whirling around the garden with in our wind dance.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle

We’ve now hung it up so that we can see it from the window to see how windy it is and watch the beautiful dance of the ribbons.

Windsock craft from plastic bottle
Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

One Comment

  1. What a few clever idea! I like the idea of using the plastic bottle as the top portion and making it like a ‘sun catcher’. I may have my kids at church make some of these. Thank you for your idea!!

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