Straw and Pipe Cleaner Candles

My girls LOVE singing Happy Birthday, for the past few months it's practically been our family anthem. They both invent all sorts of things to be our 'cakes' and they think the part where we pretend to blow the candles out is utterly the best thing ever. Lately Bubble has been asking me over and over for 'real candles' to blow out, so today we did a bit of experimenting and came up with these. Suffice to say they were popular :-)

WE USED:

* drinking straws
* scissors
* pipecleaner (we used yellow)
* playdough or similar

First I cut the straws in half then cut slits in the sides about three quarters of the way down. Cut through about half of the straw but no more than that.

Push a cut pipecleaner through the slit in the side of the straw, it should slide in easily.

Push the pipecleaner all the way through the straw until you have enough of it sticking out the top to fold over. Bend and secure the other end into a loop so that it is secure and the pipecleaner cant be pulled out of the straw by accident.

You can then pull the 'flame' of the candle up and down using the looped end.

We made a playdough cake with our Christmas Playdough for our candles to go in.

As the girls blew out each candle we pulled the loops to make the flames disappear.

One candle blown out.

All gone! The flames pop back up easily when you push the pipecleaner up again. Be prepared for a LOT of singing ;-D

“Come over to play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up”