A Toothbrush Fit For an Elephant

Here’s what happened. One day, we were innocently perusing the internet when we stumbled onto Fun at Home With Kids, a way-cool blog by Asia Citro. And we saw that she and her kids had made elephant toothpaste. What the what? 

It’s true, and we wanted to try it out, too. So we did, and it was a big hit and did exactly what it was supposed to do, foaming and growing all over the place. Beckett and Fen and her BFF couldn’t resist jamming their hands all into the stuff and playing around.

I highly recommend making this outside or in an area that’s easy to clean up.

 

We thought the elephants were pretty lucky to get such cool toothpaste, but how were they to brush those mammoth teeth of theirs without a toothbrush? Surely we should help them, or they were in danger of having terrible breath.

Photo credit: TeryKats / Foter / CC BY-ND

 

Here’s what we did to make our elephant toothbrush:

Materials:

• Shipping box (we used the USPS Ready Post box that is a long tube.)
• Tempera paint
• Roll of white drawing paper
• Sheets of foam in a similar color to the paint
• White pipe cleaners (get the 100 pack)
• Sharpened pencil or pen, or something to poke holes through the foam
• Aleene’s Tacky Glue

 

Directions:

Put the shipping box together and wrap it in white paper, present-style. Paint it with your favorite color of paint, and let it dry completely.

 

Cut 3 pieces of foam to the same width as the board and approximately 9″ long. Tape them together with 2 small pieces of duct tape (this is so they don’t shift during hole-poking.) Poke holes in even rows over the 3 layers of foam- we did 18 rows of 10 holes each.

 

Fold each pipe cleaner in half and poke the ends up through 2 holes. This is surprisingly fun to do; sort of meditative.

 

 

Glue the toothbrush head to the handle with Aleene’s tacky glue. I’m loving this stuff and using it more and more lately.

Behold your giant toothbrush, which will makes some elephants extremely happy.

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