Naomi (Ruth 1)

This Naomi or Ruth craft illustrates the moment that Oprah leaves and Ruth stays. The mechanism is simple but not recommended for very young children. Moving crafts are always fun and this little double hinge gives a lovely effect.

There are 2 pages to print for this project. The first is a background and the second is the workings. I’d strongly recommend printing on card, or backing onto thin card, for this project. You will also need a craft knife, scissors, glue and three split pins.

For printing in Colour PDF – two pages
For printing with no Colour PDF – two pages

Cut out all the shapes, on the mechanism page and the slits on the background page. As a leader you may want to cut the slits out of the background before giving it to the children.

Use a hole punch and make holes over the five small black squares – the sixth is in the middle of the background so you will need to push a hole or use a craft knife.

Now comes the folding. The long thin mechanism parts have bits sticking out, these will be the sliders that go onto the ‘tracks’ and eventually make the characters move. Fold them where the lines cut them into smaller boxes. They should end up looking like the picture.

Start by putting the sliders into the tracks. The longer arm bit goes on top! Push the ends of the slider together, post through the slit and then open up flat, a bit like a split pin. Repeat with the other slider.

Now to assemble the mechanism. Turn to the back and take the central hinge, you can see the holes line up. You will need to work so the arms of the split pins face you.

Take 2 split pins and attach the two arms to the central hinge, then attach the central hinge piece to the background with a third split pin. This sounds much more complicated than it is to do.

To stop the mechanism floating about thread the two arms through the guiding slits at the side of the background.

Lastly grab the glue and attach the characters to the mechanism. Do this by first pulling the top arm of the mechanism then adding glue to the small sliders and placing the characters on top. Also add on the pentagons to the arms.