Inkless Tales

You’ll need:

• Square piece of paper
• scissors
• straw or wooden dowel
• paper fastener or push pin
• ruler
• pencil

Step one:

On one side of your paper square, draw two diagonal lines from one corner of the square to the other. It should form an X.

Step two:

Mark lines about a half an inch from the center of the square, so you know where to stop cutting.

Step three:

Cut along the lines you just drew so that you have four almost-triangles in your paper.

Step four:

Once it's all cut out, it's time to bend the corners so that it starts to look like a pinwheel. You'll take the right side and bend it in (without folding it) to the middle. You'll do this for each triangle. Take a look at the photographs to see how it's done.

Feel free to use tiny pieces of tape to hold them in place till you can fasten them. It's a little tricky.

(Try holding them down and taking pictures for a web site at the same time!! It wasn't easy. -ewb)

Step five:

Fasten the pinwheel together. Here we used a paper fastener. These are available at office supply stores, Wal*Mart, or just about anywhere. The trick: punch it through one flap at a time, and to get it to spin, make sure the hole is big enough.

I like the paper fasteners because they are safer than push pins, even though they don't spin as well as push pins.

Step six:

If you use a push pin, then find a wooden dowel. It's thick enough that the back of the pin will be hidden and won't stick out and hurt you. You'll need a grownup to help you, though.

If you use a straw, here's a good trick to get a hole right in the middle, just the right size for a paper fastener.

Bend the straw near the top.

Use the scissors and cut a tiny hole, right in the middle of the bend.

This will make a hole just big enough for a fastener.

Remember: you can always make the hole bigger, but you can't make it smaller. So start small, and work your way up.

Step seven:

The finished pinwheel!

Try these fun patterns for your pinwheel at home. They're PDF files, so you'll need to make sure you have the FREE reader from Adobe. If you don't already have it (you probably do) you can download the FREE Reader here.