After I posted the step-by-step pictures on how to make the starburst braid, I’ve had a few people asking how to do it for kids with less hair. My oldest daughter has thicker hair than any child I know, so the same hairdo looked quite different on my 2.5 year old:

I modified the hairstyle slightly, because stretching all the thin hair from the back up to the braid looked funny and came loose very easily. So I started with a lace braid headband (as I so often do, to catch all the baby hair from around the face), then chose the thickest part of the hair for the middle ponytail, and then french braided around it, leaving the hair at the back loose. See my post from last week for details:

The trick with thin and short hair is to keep the circle small: don’t stretch the strands that come out of the ponytail, try to keep the braid near the ponytail by stretching the outer hair strands instead. (This will make sense to anyone who has tried the starburst braid).

The braid lasted for a day and a half, but then we went swimming again, and it turned quite artistic: