At first it was a telescope. Then the boy wanted to do some cutting... so I had him cut one end of the paper in varying lengths and gently pulling some strands down. Then it became a tree. But he wanted leaves too. So I folded a piece of green construction paper and cut out some leaves (with some leaves connected on one side), and cut slits into the leaves. Then we just attached them to the branches and voila. Instant tree. If you shake the tree, the leaves will fall off. I guess you can glue them in, but I didn't want to mess around with glue.
It's a quick fun activity and if you have a few more toilet paper rolls and construction paper, you can make a forest of trees. It's very versatile. Add some red, orange and yellow leaves for autumn. Cotton balls if you want snow.
If you're creative, you can probably transform this into a christmas tree. I envision using green construction paper instead of brown and feather cutting the branches to make pine needles. Then making and adding decorations.
