So we are doing some early Spring activities and hoping that the cold winter season will pass soon in our city! Fingers crossed! Here are some Spring inspiring crafts that are easy to do for little hands and very colorful! We promise you that your little one will have a blast doing our craft activities! Here we go...
Confetti Art
Materials: glue stick, pre-drawn/printed shape on white or light colored paper, 2 inch long green construction paper strips, 2 googly eyes and Spring confetti
This activity is super simple! You will need a pre drawn or printed picture(s) of something related to Spring. We chose a rabbit because that's what our little guy wanted. You also need a packet of Spring confetti (we got ours for a $1 from the dollar store!). Then, you need to apply glue to the inner part of the blank shape using a glue stick. Now the fun begins, let your little one use his/her tiny fingers to press the confetti to the inside of the shape (great for fine motor development). Upon completion, press the confetti with your hands to ensure that it sticks to the paper and doesn't fall off. We then cut green construction paper in 2 inch strips and cut little slits halfway (looked like a comb) on the top of the paper. Then we glued the strips to the bottom of the page. We used our hands to curl the paper forward to give it the appearance of grass. To make it fun, we added some googly eyes to make our Spring-inspired Confetti Rabbit!
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| © Everything Family Guide |
Spring Blooms
Materials: liquid glue, confetti or glitter, colorful pipe cleaners, toilet paper tube, recycled paper (for decoration), a piece of tape and stickers
We do this activity every year for Spring! It is super easy and lots of fun! First, we cut the little egg holders/bulbs from the egg carton. Then we cut out tiny triangles (around 3/4 for each bulb) on the top of the bulb. We poke a hole in the center of the bulb to slide in the pipe cleaners. I always fold the top of the pipe cleaner on the inside of the bulb to keep it from slipping out. Finally, we add decorations to the flower bulbs using liquid glue to tack on confetti or sprinkle on some glitter. To make it into a bouquet, we twisted the pipe cleaners together. For a vase, we used a toilet paper tube and wrapped it with leftover wrapping paper. We taped the wrapping to secure it in place and decorated the top of the vase with foam stickers (we used animals or insects that you would see out in Spring). We slid the bouquet inside to make a Spring-inspired flower bouquet in a recycled vase.
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| © Everything Family Guide |
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| Recycled Spring Bouquet © Everything Family Guide |
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| Spring Flower Bouquet © Everything Family Guide |
Pipe Cleaner Butterflies
(Materials: different colored pipe cleaners)
This craft was inspired by a blog post at the Gummy Lump Toys Blog. It took a little trial and error by our preschooler to master the butterfly twisting process, but it was a fun learning activity. Just a word of CAUTION: the ends of the pipe cleaner can be very sharp/pokey, so please proceed carefully. First, we twisted both the ends of the pipe cleaner to form an "O" shape. Next, we twisted them in the center (a few times) to make a "Bow-tie" shape. Then we folded the pipe cleaner in half and strung a different colored pipe cleaner around the folded bow-shaped pipe cleaner. We twisted the new pipe cleaner on and worked our way vertically. When we were done, we opened the bow shape to reveal a beautiful butterfly!
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| © Everything Family Guide |
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| Pipe Cleaner Butterflies © Everything Family Guide |
"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" Paint Collage
Materials: Sheets of white paper, watercolor paints, paint brush, water, glue stick, scissors, markers, and a Large sheet of paper.
- We painted a variety of colors (inspired by Eric Carle's book: The Very Hungry Caterpillar) on white sheets of paper. We didn't use any particular painting technique but we made sure that the whole surface of the paper was covered in paint. So this way, we painted five sheets of paper using a variety of paint colors. We left the paper to dry.
- When the painted paper was dried, we traced shapes of butterfly wings, circles and strips, using a pencil crayon.
- Then our budding artist cut out the shapes from the painted paper with a pair of scissors.
- We laid our cut-outs and planned where we would place our painted paper cut-outs on the large sheet of paper using the book as a reference (the very last page with the butterfly on it).
- Then we glued on the shapes like a collage (one-by-one) to help form a butterfly in the end. This project turned out so good and it's definitely going our little guys art portfolio where I save all his treasured artwork. I plan on using a technique by artist Jan Eleni to collage my son's mounting art projects in his portfolio. Then we will present that to him as a graduation gift.
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| © Everything Family Guide |
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| The Very Hungry Caterpillar inspired Collage © Everything Family Guide |
Spring is my favorite season of the year..how about you?
Annie
