Get crafty with the DUCK Lab! Each Friday, trained research assistants from the UNCG Psychology Department’s DUCK Lab will guide at-home crafts for children ages 3 to 12. Parents can join too to learn fun facts about crafts that foster age-appropriate skills or learn about the DUCK Lab’s nonprofit child development research projects.
This Friday, the DUCK Lab invites all preschool-age friends to join Andrea and make a funny face for some laughs! Follow along as Andrea takes you through each step and see how an assortment of common objects can come together to make a funny face!
Parents, did you know?
This craft offers an opportunity for your children to illustrate their knowledge and familiarity with an important social cue: faces! Read on below for more info. about the connection between these types of activities and age-appropriate developmental milestones.
We also invite you to check out our child development research opportunities, which are now modified for the virtual world! Please click here to learn more or sign up to participate with us.
Here’s what you’ll need to get started:
Supplies:
Construction paper
Felt or foam paper cut into a large circle by a parent (this will serve as your face circle)
Scissors
Glue
Markers (for tracing)
Yarn
Pipe cleaners
Googly eyes
Pom-poms
Directions:
Trace and cut out a mouth shape from construction paper. Then, put some glue on your face circle and attach the mouth shape.
Add more glue to the face circle for the pom-pom nose. Then, stick the pom-pom onto your face circle. Hold down the pom-pom for a few seconds to ensure attachment.
Add additional glue to the face circle for googly eyes. Stick googly eyes to these areas.
Add more glue to the face circle for optional hair. Then, attach yarn/pipe cleaners/construction paper/or your own material to represent hair.
Add glue above the mouth for an optional mustache. Attach yarn/pipe cleaners/construction paper/or your own material to represent a mustache.
The DUCK Lab: Funny Paper Face
Relation to Developmental Science:
Beginning in early infancy, children pay special attention to faces. This illustrates how attuned children are to their social surroundings from an early age: faces showcase a variety of social cues, such as emotion, but can also be used to help establish familiarity with other people. Young children’s reliance on and knowledge about faces is further demonstrated by their spatial recognition abilities that allow them to accurately organize facial features. Since young children pay attention to faces, and are also able to pick up on patterns, they know that specific facial features are usually found in the same location across people (e.g., eyes go above the mouth, rather than next to the mouth). Importantly, preschoolers are also very imaginative, so some children might use this craft to put facial features in new locations (e.g., eyes below mouth) as a form of humor or creativity.
*Great for preschoolers!
The DUCK Lab is a partner in the nonprofit Child Development Research Center in the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. They conduct studies of social and cognitive development with 2- to 12- year-olds. Families who participate in their research studies are volunteers in the Greensboro community who generously offer their time to help support research and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.