4 Spring Art and Craft Activities

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!

© 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.

 

© Everything Family Guide

Recycled Spring Bouquet © Everything Family Guide

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!

© Everything Family Guide

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.

© Everything Family Guide

 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar inspired Collage © Everything Family Guide

Spring is my favorite season of the year..how about you?
Annie

Recycle Art: Window Collage

Here at Everything Family Guide, we are busy recycling and re-purposing everyday junk items and turning them into colorful, fun art projects. Today, we did an activity that is very simple and takes only a half hour block to complete.

Materials List:

• 2 pieces of paper (from the recycling bin)
• Glossy magazines or flyers (from the recycling bin)
• Glue stick
• Crayons

Project Instructions:

• To make the top page of the project, you need to fold the second paper in half and then fold it into another half to form a four paged book. Now, draw any shape like an Oval or diamond on the folded part of the paper. Cut the shape on the inside fold of the paper to form a paper cut-out pattern. When done cutting, open the paper and glue on top of the magazine strips paper. Look at the example below.

© Everything Family Guide

• Tear flyers or magazine paper into long vertical strips. Apply glue on paper and glue the magazine strips in any position (vertical or horizontal). Place it under a heavy object to keep it from curling; this helps to dry the paper flat/straight.

© Everything Family Guide

 

• You are all done after you have added some funky designs using pencil crayons! The paper cut-outs will make for an amazing window display.

© Everything Family Guide

This project can be done in many ways and with different design cut-outs. Here are some recycling tips to share with your little learners:

• Reduce (Avoid buying excessive things and throw out less in the garbage.)
• Reuse (Turn your junk into funky art and craft projects or use old cans/jars for storing things. Food garbage can be composted for reuse in the garden.)
• Recycle (Remember to recycle paper, plastics, cans, electronics and other items in the proper way and take them to the right recycling outlets).

Have fun recycling!

Annie

Recycle Art: Paper Mâché Bowls

We are back with another recycle art project. We have been going around our house scavenging for things that can be recycled, reused or re-purposed. It is always fun to go recycling. Here in our city we are lucky enough to get a reward: turn in your recycled bottles and cans to get some spare change. We usually donate that into charities or buy something for the food bank. For this project we used recycled paper that came inside a delivery box. Please be forewarned that paper Mâché projects can be a little bit of a sticky mess but it is always an easy cleanup.

You will need: 

• Recycled paper
• Homemade sticky paste (prepared in advance; ingredients - flour, water, a pot, stove and a whisk)
• A Bowl (glass or plastic)
• Vaseline or Plastic wrap
• Paintbrush

© Everything Family Guide

Task:

1. Firstly, we made our paper Mâché paste by boiling one and a half cup of water on the stove. We turned the stove off and added half a cup of flour to the boiling water by constantly stirring the paste with a whisk. This will keep the mixture from forming lumps of flour. Then we allowed the paste to cool before use. This paste will serve as glue for making the paper Mâché bowl. This part of the activity should be done under the direct supervision of an adult. 
2. Next, we tore strips and pieces of recycled paper. No exact length is necessary but it is important to avoid really small pieces of paper as that would require more time to complete the project. This activity is for a preschooler and little strips of paper will work well with older kids.
3. Before beginning the activity, we applied a tiny bit of Vaseline to the inner part of the bowl with our hands. This ensures the easy removal of your paper Mâché project once its' done. If you do not want to use Vaseline then it can be done by securely and tightly applying plastic wrap around the inside or outside of the bowl.
4. Now the fun part began, we applied strips of paper directly on the inside of the Vaseline-applied bowl. We painted that first layer with our paste using a paint brush. Then we applied another paper layer and topped it off with the paste. We applied layers about six times to achieve the desired thickness of the bowl. Upon completion, we applied one final layer of paste with the paint brush.  
5. Now the wait began...we left the bowl overnight or until it dried off completely. This is how we checked for readiness: the flour paste will solidify the paper to form a bowl shape on its own. 
6. When it was done, we carefully removed the paper bowl from the original bowl. I used a butter knife to carefully dislodge the project from the bowl. To make the bowl interesting, we added details with glitter paint.  Here is the result after our bowl dried:

Before decorations © Everything Family Guide

After decorations © Everything Family Guide

Earth Day is not too far away. Here is a book that talks about recycling and reusing things.

© Everything Family Guide

Plus, we love to recycle! How about you?

Annie

Mini Journals

This week we are starting something new with our preschooler; Mini Journals. Since my child's ability to hold a pencil is advancing and he is more precise with the written word practice, I believe that he will benefit a lot from this activity. Mini Journals are perfect for preschoolers because they are:

• SMALL (made from folding one paper in half and folded again to make four pages which were then stapled at the top to make a mini booklet) and perfect for little hands.
• CONVENIENT and can be carried anywhere (i.e. to the library, outside, and/or anywhere around the house).
• Perfect for journaling ideas and drawing pictures before, during and after a learning activity.
• Easy to store; you can glue them in a notebook or keep them with your other teaching/learning materials.
• A great learning tool as you can explore or learn about a topic and save all your ideas in a little book. I would like to revisit these journals whenever we revisit the topic that we learned to add or revise learning concepts.
• Unique to every learner: this is very true as you can build and design the journals specific to your child's learning needs. In the beginning, the project will be guided by you because it will help you set learning goals and journal expectations. I have seen experienced Kindergarten teachers use printable pictures and writing samples to guide their students to learn the best possible way to journal. As their students progress through the school year, they eventually become independent journal writers. It all depends on the child's learning needs and how much guidance he/she may need.

For this activity, we used recyclable materials to decorate our journal picture. We read a book about cupcakes called "If you give a Cat a Cupcake" by Laura Numeroff. We then decided to do a journal about cupcakes in the spring theme. In the book, the cat asks for sprinkles to decorate the cupcakes. That was my preschoolers' favorite part of the story and that's why we decided to decorate a cupcake using left over pencil shavings from our sharpener container.

© Everything Family Guide

What's a Mini Journal? It can include:

• Writing Practice
• Academic Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Phonics
• Sentence Writing
• Pictures (either printed or drawn by the child)
• Visual Representations of the concept learned
• And Much more

Mini Journals are a great way to introduce writing and expression of thoughts/emotions. For example, after learning about the life cycle of a butterfly, you can let your child draw a stage of the life cycles or let them draw a butterfly/caterpillar. It is also a good idea to encourage your child to write descriptions of their pictures using academic language. It may seem complex for very young learners (especially Preschoolers or Kindergartners) and that is where the teacher's role comes in play. You will provide written or drawn expectations in the beginning and allow your child to practice rewriting the vocabulary words or coloring in the pictures provided by you. The child can also do activities that promote learning for early writers like cutting, pasting, gluing, arranging or matching based on printed materials provided by you. This means a little more prep on your part but it is not much. It literally took me around 5 to 10 minutes to prepare the journal lesson for my child. For a group of children, it is important to use pre-printed materials or use a Teacher's Master Copy for photocopying multiple copies (Teacher works on a sample or reference copy and then photocopies it for the students' use).

 

Overall, Mini Journals are an awesome learning/teaching tool and we will definitely be sharing our experiences in the coming months. What are some of your journal experiences with your child or students? Also, what are your tips or suggestions for improvement to this particular project? Thanks for reading!

 

Annie

Toddler Art using Old Markers

We have a lot of old markers lying around in our stationary tub that were either dried out or ran out of ink. We discovered today that you don't have to throw those dried out markers in the trash right away. Actually, the little one tried to suck on the dried out marker and got an orange tongue! YUCK! We decided to use the dried markers for art instead ;)

This is what we did: I provided the budding artists with a bowl of water, old markers and paper dollies. You can also use coffee filters to watch the ink spread for a cool Tie-Dye effect. It is very easy and all your child has to do is dip their marker in the water bowl and then touch the paper with the wet marker tip. The ink spreads by itself as the paper gets wet and the effect is Tie-Dye.  

Warning: If your child tries to color the paper, it might work or the paper can rip. Anyhow, here is the project in progression...

Bowl of Water, Old Markers, and Paper Dollies © Everything Family Guide

Dipping and Dyeing © Everything Family Guide

The Finished Project © Everything Family Guide

 

So here we have it: Tye-Dye Paper Dolly Art using dried-out markers.

Happy Recycling y'all!

Annie