Scarecrow Popsicle Stick Puzzle with 3D Elements

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Check out this easy Scarecrow 3D Textured Popsicle Stick Puzzle for little hands. Simple to make and hours of fun, it’s a great fall “busy bag” idea.

If you’re looking for more great ideas to keep little hands curious, check out these 12+ Fine Motor Skills Activities for preschoolers. So many great ideas for fall fun.

You’ve seen the fun little popsicle stick puzzles for toddlers or preschoolers right? Well, I wanted to take that idea and improve on it to make it even more intriguing for little hands.

So I thought that adding more color and more textures would do just that, and set out to create something special for a fall activity. What I came up with was this popsicle stick scarecrow puzzle, it is ideal as a quiet activity for younger children while you work with older children or can be taken along in a bag to restaurants or doctor appointments to keep them busy.

What You Need to Make This 3D Textured Scarecrow Popsicle Stick Puzzle

You can make your Scarecrow Craft for Fall as simple or as detailed as you like. We started with a pretty simple version but game him a little dimension and texture rather than just drawing him on with a sharpie.

To make your scarecrow 3D puzzle, you will need some pretty basic craft supply items:

The following items are affiliate links on Amazon because they may be a bit hard to find in your normal store.  I wanted you to be able to see exactly which things we are using.

• Wide popsicle sticks
• Flannel scraps
• Burlap scraps
• A small button
• A black sharpie
• Sticky craft glue
• Straw/hay or cut up bits of yellow paper
• Straight edge knife

Reminder, not all items for the fall puzzle are linked above, just the ones that may be a bit difficult to find or that you might be unsure of what to look for.

How to Make this Scarecrow 3D Puzzle:

Line up your sticks one as seen in the picture. It’s totally up to how tall you want your puzzle to be, but 6-8 sticks is a pretty good number. You can add painters tape to the ends if you like to help keep the craft sticks from slipping around while you work.

Remove the bottom stick and cover it with glue, press down a piece of fabric, make sure that your glue is holding it down all over. Trim off excess fabric, your glue will stop the fabric from fraying. Add a button to the center with glue.

Find a small cup or bowl to trace the scarecrow head, be sure that it fits into the space of your remaining sticks. Trace and cut out a circle from burlap.Cover one side in glue and press down onto the sticks, you don’t need to leave any space between the sticks.

Put a generous amount of glue and press your hay/straw or bits of yellow paper down to make hair.

Allow your puzzle to dry completely.

Take a straight edge blade and cut each of your sticks apart.

Glue on two eyes where they should be on one stick.

Use a sharpie to add a nose on the next stick and a sewn on mouth on the next to spread your details out.

For a little older kid, they might have fun painting a few sticks with different elements, and you can make a few of “options” with different eyes, nose, mouth shapes and from different items. When it’s all dry, let your child mix and match the puzzle pieces.

For younger children you can number them from top to bottom to help them figure out where the pieces go if you like.

 

You could even build on this fall activity to make a second set of jigsaw puzzles to make a backdrop for this fun scarecrow with some artwork for a halloween background like spooky trees and clouds, like a haunted forest set and other halloween decorations.

Or a little less-spooky idea would be a farm scene where they can pretend the family farm is alive with halloween antics with no scary clouds in the haunted house sky. Because scary is bad sometimes.

Really, there’s just a variety of ideas to get your little thinkers thinking. Or puzzlers puzzling, as it were.

At the end of the day this is not supposed to be some fascinating challenge for puzzlers or great artwork to display in a museum. Just good fun for kids to do when they need to be a little quiet.

The Best Preschool Fall Activities:

• Free Fall Activities to Do as a Family
• Pumpkin Fall Activities for Preschoolers
• Contact Paper Activities for Kids

More Popsicle Stick Activities

• So many Cool Popsicle Stick Crafts, I Can’t Count Them
• 15+ Popsicle Stick Crafts for Kids
• Pilgrim Popsicle Stick Puzzle

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