Catching up, Part 2: Milk Jug Easter Basket

One of Jacob's major homework projects in March was to create and decorate -- with help from Mom and Dad, of course -- an Easter basket out of a milk jug.  

The assignment sheet had some pictures of some examples, but I thought it would be cool to have a woven basket.  So we started out with a milk jug, a ruler, a marker, and some scissors.

The bottom part of the jug, below the jug handle, will be the main part of the basket.  I measured from the bottom of the jug to the bottom of the jug handle -- 4 inches. I marked a dotted line (I ended up connecting the dots later) at 4 inches from the bottom.

I thought the flat part of the jug perpendicular to the jug handle would make a great basket handle.  So I cut the lid off of the jug, then I held my ruler against the flat part and drew a line on either side of the ruler.

Time to cut.  First I cut down along the handles, stopping at my dotted 4-inch line.

Then I cut along the 4-inch line.  I taped the two pieces of the handle together at the top.

Now, to decorate.  Tammy picked a few Easter colors from our pad of construction paper.  She cut the paper into strips, 1-inch wide.  I taped two strips together and cut them to the right length.  First, we picked blue for the up/down part of the weave.  I folded about an inch or so of the strip into the basket and taped it there.  One strip goes from a corner of the basket across to the opposite corner.  Repeat for the other two corners.  One strip goes from the middle of one side to the opposite side; repeat for the other two sides.  You end up with a criss-cross of blue on the bottom of the basket.  (Sorry, I didn't get a picture of that.)

Next, the weaving.  I did the first one, because it took a little love and care to get it to fit the jug correctly.  I cut and folded and taped a little so it would look right.  After that, Jacob took over.  I told him to use an A/B pattern of over, under.  Again, we taped two strips of construction paper end-to-end so we would have the right length.

Next we wrapped some construction paper and some colorful pipe cleaners around the handle, added his name (via scrapbooking stickers), and DONE!  It was a fun project for the whole family.