princess hats

My Niece-Aged-3 has been going through a very princessy phase. Actually, less phase, more eat-sleep-live-breathe-dream. She adores the Disney princesses but drinks in any other fairy tales involving princesses too. We visited the library together last Tuesday and grabbed a whole collection of fairy tales and there was one obscure and slightly strange princess tale that took about 20 minutes to read but she sat completely engrossed the entire time, eyes wide, as a white bear king (who was actually a prince) snatched off a princess and as the princess ended up rescuing the prince with the aid of a tablecloth.

Then, this Tuesday, Niece-Aged-3 and I role-played princes and princesses for over an hour while Niece-Aged-2 had her afternoon nap. When I finally tired and couldn't be wheedled back into story-telling, Niece-Aged-3 continued to imagine, all by herself, except that at one point I had to come over and make the toy penguin (who was doubling as a prince) kiss her, because Sleeping Beauty obviously can't kiss the penguin herself.

The moderate feminist within me wonders if we're inculcating Niece-Aged-3 with an unrealistic view of men and an incredibly dated view of women and marriage. The problem is, it's hardly so much the adult world forcing its views on Niece-Aged-3 as Niece-Aged-3 demanding romance and Prince Charming from us!

So our other project for this rainy indoor Tuesday was making princess hats. I must say I think I did pretty well with these, and so I thought I'd share the process with you. Now you can:

Make your own princess hats

Here is the template I made from two pieces of A4 paper sellotaped together:

The actual frames for the hats I made from two pieces of plain-coloured card sellotaped together. Then I cut out the shape, including the two holes for the string/elastic to hold the hat on.

The child can then colour in or decorate the hat. Niece-Aged-3 coloured in with crayons for a while. Then she glued some colourful feathers on with PVA, and then decorated with glitter too. Niece-Aged-2 woke up from her nap in a very grotty mood, so I decorated hers for her, drawing flowers with crayon and giving them glitter hearts.

Then, after the glue had dried, I sellotaped up the hats into their cone shape, leaving a gap at the top. Taking two longish ribbons, I tied a rough knot at the top and inserted it into the top of the hat, before sellotaping it up so the knot won't come out.

Final touch - tying on the correct amount of string for each girl so that the hat will stay on.

Result: a very happy little princess!