Hippopotamus Zoo Animal Toilet Paper Roll Crafts for Kids

I am kind of bummed because none of the zoos in our area have hippos. However, I couldn’t possibly do a zoo animal toilet paper roll crafts for kids series with including the hippopotamus! Read on to see how to make this super cute hippo and check back tomorrow for another fun zoo animal toilet paper roll crafts for kids!

Hippopotamus Zoo Animal Toilet Paper Roll Crafts for Kids

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Materials Needed:

1 toilet paper roll
1 sheet purple construction paper or cardstock
1 purple foam sheet
1 white foam sheet
craft glue
glue gun and glue
black sharpie
2 googly eyes
scissors

How to Make the Hippo Part One:

In a perfect world, you would be able to find craft rolls at the store that are already rolled in the color you want. However, in my experience, the available colors are rather limited. No worries.. it is surprisingly easy to cover the toilet paper roll in the color of paper you want.
- You don’t want too much excess paper. Line the toilet paper roll up with the bottom edge of the construction paper or cardstock and make a small pencil mark line to denote the length of the toilet paper roll. Move the roll a few inches down the paper and do the same thing. Take a ruler or straight edge and draw a cut line.
- ‘Wrap’ the construction paper around the toilet paper roll to determine how much paper you will need to cover the roll, but not have too much overlap. Again, draw a rough cut line in pencil.
- Cut out the toilet paper roll footprint. It should be a rectangular piece of paper.
Place the toilet paper roll at the end of the paper. Line it up so that the ends are aligned.
Apply a thin line of glue on the construction paper directly in front of the toilet paper roll, where the roll touches the paper. Gently ‘roll’ the toilet paper roll onto the glue so that the end if glued on. Then, squeeze glue, covering the rest of the construction paper. Tip: don’t use too much glue. You don’t want glue oozing out the sides and end of the toilet paper roll like a jelly donut. You just want enough glue to ensure the paper sticks to the toilet paper roll.
‘Roll’ the rest of the construction paper around the toilet paper roll. Apply another thin layer of glue on the end of the paper in order to ensure the toilet paper roll is completely covered.
Trim excess paper as needed.

How to Make the Hippo Part Two:

Trace the hippo head on the back side of the purple foam. The easiest way to do this is to draw a large oval and cut it out. This is the big hippo snout. Then, draw the rest of the head (basically the eyes). Draw two angled semi-circles and connect them with a slightly curved line on the top and bottom (the bottom really doesn’t matter expect that you don’t need a lot of foam for this part). Remember, it doesn’t really matter if there are tracing marks on the back of the hippo head. If you are concerned about not being able to see the trace marks, use pencil and then erase the marks after you cut out the head.

Cut out two small’ish rectangles from the white foam sheet. These will be the hippo’s buck teeth.
Once you have cut out all the part for the head, use the glue gun to glue both the top of the hippo’s head and its teeth underneath the big oval. I tried gluing the teeth to the front of the hippo, but it didn’t look right. Trust me, big teeth below under the snout.
Draw two large nostrils onto the top of the big oval shape for the hippo’s nose.
Cut out two small but narrow half-oval shapes from the purple foam for the hippo hooves.
Draw three lines on each hoof, starting from the curved side of the foam piece.
Glue the googly eyes on with either craft glue or the glue gun. Note: My daughter did help with the googly eyes, but the eyes proved to be a little small for her to manipulate, so she lost interest quickly. Note #2: The googly eyes for the hippo should pretty much fill the two semi-circles on the top part of the hippo head.

Use a glue gun to affix the hippo head and hooves to the toilet paper roll.

Isn’t that easy? Who wouldn’t want this adorable hippopotamus in their zoo?

One final note: Even though I wanted to make this craft with my daughter, I ended up making most of it on my own. My daughter is 2 years old and still working on all of her fine motor skills. She will love playing with this tiger, and all the other zoo animals I am making. However, her involvement in the creation of this craft was minimal. If your kids are older, they will easily be able to do more of the craft than my 2 year old did.

Thanks for checking out this super cute zoo animal toilet paper roll crafts for kids series!
Sara

Did you like this craft? Would you like to see more of the zoo animal toilet paper roll crafts for kids ideas? Check out these posts: