Hand Print Butterflies Spring Craft

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Materials:

Scrapbook paper or other colourful paper 

Papertowel/toilet paper rolls

Paint

Glue

Googley eyes

Scissors 

Willing victims ;)

Paint one hand at a time and use to make the wings. Depending on the age/ability of the child either cut the wings out for them or have them cut their own. 

Paint the papertowel rolls while the butterfly dries. If its dry, use glue and apply glitter to the wings while the body (roll) dries. In our case it was lunch time so we put our glue and glitter on later. 

Glue body onto the butterfly wings. Add eyes and antennas. For the antennas we used scraps of the paper left over from the wings and folded it like an accordion. 

Apply dots of glue and glitter! 

Let dry and hand from the ceilings or in a window! Fantastic! 

Egg Carton Seed Starters

Use old egg cartons to start seeds for spring flowers or vegetables... For free! Just buy soil and seeds. 

"Robin Robin Red Breast" Spring Craft w/ Nest & Egg

Materials:

Brown Paint
Red Paint 
Paint Brush
Googley Eyes
Orange foam to cut beaks and feet
Scissors
Shredded brown or tan paper for nest
Blue foam eggs

Red feathers 
Glue

Paint the child's foot brown, or if they are able to, allow them to paint it themselves. Use the foot like a stamp to make the body of the robin on the paper.

Use red paint to paint the robin's red breast, this will later also have a red feather attached. 

Glue in eyes, beak, feet and feather. 

Build a nest out of shredded brown paper and glue it to the paper. 

Place your egg in the nest and glue it in place (I actually had self sticking eggs left from Easter). Voila! 

Blue Bird Spring Craft: Frugal Fun

We all love the sounds of the birds chirping in the morning and lately there has been a woodpecker making its home in a tree just outside the daycare. 

We have been talking a lot about birds and decided to do a bluebird and nest craft. This craft costs almost nothing, assuming you have the shredded paper we used to make the nest, it was saved from packaging of an item we ordered online. I knew it would come in handy one of these days! If you do not have the shredded paper, you can cut thin pieces of beige or brown construction paper, use a paper shredder if you have one. 

We started off by mixing some white, blue and a tiny bit of yellow together to make the colour we wanted for our bluebird. We then use a sponge to paint our hands (but not the thumb) and stamp them on the paper. 

We let the paint dry and then glued on eyes and a beak, and spread on glue for the nest. We finished by putting the shredded/crinkled papers under the bird as if it was a nest.

Once dry, you can shake off the extra papers. What a simple yet fun spring craft :) 

Free Craft Alert! Rainbow Colour Cards

Use large Behr paint cards to make this craft. You can pick them up for free at just about any location that sells Behr paints. I chose all the colours of the rainbow to help our preschoolers and toys remember and learn their colors.

We used the colors of the rainbow in that order:red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. 

I pre-punched the little holes to put the ribbon and pre-cut lengths of white ribbon.  When doing the craft we handed out the ribbon and one colour card at a time. 

Once we had all 6 colour cards on the ribbon we tied it, and then used the fancy hole punches to decorateour colour   cards :)

Children under 3 needed help to put the ribbon in the holes and help to punch the  fancy hole punches but otherwise enjoyed the craft and loved their rainbow colour cards! 

Stained Glass Spring Snails

Materials:

Paper Plates
Glue
Tissue paper
Scissors
Green Construction/Green Cardstock Paper
Googley Eyes
Pipe Cleaners
*Optional: Hot glue gun (holds pipe cleaners on better)

Pick your colors of tissue paper, I used yellow, blue and pink because when laid over eachother they also produced green and purple.

Fold up tissue paper and cut the folds to make strips, cut the strips into squares.

Cover the plate with glue, stick on the tissue paper, let dry. This is the snail's shell.

While the snail's shell dries draw out the shape of the body on a piece of construction/cardstock paper. I cut out all of them at once where the majority of our children have no yet mastered scissors.

Glue the shell to the body, add an eye, antenna and smile :)

Voila!

Earth Day 2013: Earth Day Crayons, Globes, and Paper Plate Earth

Earth Day Crayons!

What better way to celebrate Earth Day than by making crafts in the likeness of our planet Earth! 

Materials:

Old/Broken Blue/green, blue, green, white crayons

Small Muffin tin

Fine cheese grater 

Oven

 Pam or non-stick spray

Where I am all about recycling and reusing materials, I dug through our crayon container and found several crayons that were broken or that the paper was coming off of. Singled out the blue-green and green and also found a small white one. We made our own crayon pucks last year around Christmas time, some were multicolored and some were red and green. They were fun to make and fun to color with. I thought, why not try to make an Earth shape with blue and green. When I found the little white crayon I wanted to make the earth crayon have clouds, just like the real Earth has.

The children and I peeled the papers off the crayons and broke them into small pieces. Before putting the crayons in the tin, make sure you spray it with a non-stick cooking spray like Pam.





We first added blue bits to 9 of the 12 mini-muffin tins. We then added the two shades of green. After this was complete I used a cheese grater to shave off little white bits. We sprinkled those on top of the blue and green.



Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for 5-7 minutes or until all the crayons are melted. be careful when you remove it from the oven, the wax will be very runny and HOT!



Let the muffin pan cool completely. You should be able to turn it over and the crayon earths will fall out, if not, shake or twist the pan like you would an ice cube tray.

They should turn out something like these! 


Use the crayons to color on paper and watch as the color turns from blue to green and back to blue again. It is a really fun way to color!

Earth Day Globes

Materials: 

Air Dry Foam Modelling Clay in Blue and Green

Wax paper/parchment paper

Air dry foam clay can be found almost anywhere, the most economical is Dollarama stores. There is not always a wide variety but I try to stock up when its available.

Roll a ball with a chunk of blue modelling clay. Immediately get a much smaller chunk of green. Break the green up into 6-8 smaller chunks varying in sizes, flatten these out with your finger on the wax paper to make a random shape. Stick the random shapes on the round ball, to look like the green land and blue water on a globe. 

Paper Plate Earth

Materials:

Paper plates

Blue paint

Glue

Scissors

Green paper or other material, prefurably recycled or reused

(we used old paint swatches)

Paint paper plate blue. I asked the children to do their very best job to cover all the white. 

Cut out completely random shapes of green, this is a great way to practice cutting skills! 

Glue the green stuff on the paper plate. So simple!