How To Make Paper Hats

Cottonwood library uses food theme for summer reading

Cottonwood Community Library volunteer Renee Ashe pointed to the baseball-size orb, white with a pale purple top, and asked the children crowded around her, "What's this?"

"An onion?" someone called out.

Nope. Turnip.

She tried another, this time holding up a ridged, dark green object with a touch of orange.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked.

"A pumpkin!!"

Close. Acorn squash.

Not all the food stumped the crowd. Hailey Hicks, 6, recognized potatoes right away. "They grow in the ground. You have to dig them up," she said. "At my house, we grow potatoes."

The 30 or so children at Cottonwood Community Library's "Fun with Vegetables" summer reading program Wednesday weren't just quizzed about vegetables. They got to taste some and decorate with others. It was the second of eight food-themed sessions planned this summer.

Ashe, vice president of the library board, read three books, including "I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato." Then it was off to the activity room where the kids sampled carrots, turnips, snap peas, radishes and celery, and used cut vegetables dipped in paint as stamps to embellish paper chef hats. The hats will be worn at upcoming sessions.

Maddy Gilliss — who earlier had told the group, "I like cob on the corn" — worked intently with friend Mem McDougall on the hats. The two 4-year-olds plopped a radish, turnip, pea pod and mushroom into blobs of paint on paper plates and then stamped their hats.

"I think it is fabulous," Mem's mother, Diedre McDougall of Cottonwood, said of the summer reading program. "It is teaching them something new, and they are having fun. And hopefully it might make them eat something that they wouldn't have."

Lauren Tingley of Red Bluff dipped half a radish in green paint and handed it to her daughter Kylan, 2, who tentatively pressed it onto a hat.

"She doesn't go to preschool or day care, so I use this as socialization," Tingley said. "I think they have really good activities."

Anja Biddlecomb, 8, tried her first taste of turnip. The verdict?

"I liked it," she said.

Nearby, her brother Jack, 4, crunched a carrot, which he confirmed as his favorite veggie of the day.

Up next for the summer program is "Fun with Fruit." Other themes to be explored include fish, fowl and desserts. Library Director Gayle Harrington said the library decided on "Kids in the Kitchen" for the eight-week program to give children insight into food.

about all: How to make creations with plates of paper Party Hat

Hat of another easy paper plate design is a form of heart. Double plate in half and taking advantage of the half of a heart. Keep the folded plate and cut around the heart, leave it connected to the scalloped band. Then just open the plate and fold the heart up. This same method could be used to make a hat of cake birthday pop-up, Castle hat, hat of choo choo train, cat kitty hat, you choose! Symmetry designs work best. You can even you have an intact paper plate and decorate with a Margarita, the sunflower, the Sun or Ladybug design. Plaque in the desired color paint and let dry. Crop of petals of flowers, the Sun's rays or spots of Mariquita in the appropriate colors and leave children to build the design of your choice. As always, implement a Ribbon knotted through a hole on both sides of the plate to celebrate the "hood" sobre.

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