Paper Plate Turtle

I’m teaching art once a week at a local Christian school so I thought I would share my crafts.  Since we’re in Florida and sea turtles nest on the beaches here, I thought paper plate turtles would be a good craft.  It can be as easy or hard as you want.  All you need are two paper plates (I used heavy duty just because they had a little more dome shape to them), green or brown construction paper, crayons/markers, and a stapler (glue might work).

This was my pattern.  The big piece is the head and front flippers, the smaller one is for the back flippers (so cut two).  You will also need a tail, but we just ripped a corner off the construction paper and used that.

One the back of one of the paper plates, draw three hexagons in the middle.  The draw a line from each of the points to the edge of the plate (these are called scutes).  If you’re feeling fancy, add little rectangles around the edge.

Color your turtle and then staple it together.  You could use googly eyes if you wanted, but we just drew eyes.