Spring Art Projects

How about using the children's hands to create the butterfly wings? You could fold a piece of paper in half and trace their hands - one hand for the top set of wings, one for the bottom. Open the paper and ta da - handy butterflies. You could also do string art butterflies. fold a piece of paper in half. Dip yarn in paint and lay inside the paper. You can do 2-3 colors of paint. Lay all the yarn on the paper at the same time. Fold the top paper down and press on it. Have the students pull the yarn out from between the paper (while you are still pressin on the top ). The results are great symmetrical pictures. Use an Art marker to have the students fill in a butterfly body, head and antennae. Good Luck. Cindy

My second graders made "Best Dressed Bunnies" and had a lot of fun with it. To make the bunnies big we folded and cut a gingerbread boy shape on 12x18 paper and then added ears made from the scraps. We talked about different possible shapes, like Bugs Bunny, and other shapes and how they could make a "muscle- bunny" or give it a chubby or curvy shape. Then we used wallpaper scraps, and construction paper for the clothing, cutting the pieces like paper doll clothes then gluing them on. Stores often give away or sell outdated wallpaper sample books inexpensively.
Just watch your wording so the boys don't think its a "girly" thing to do. The boys made boy bunnies, weight-lifters, bikers, football players, current rock stars and even Elvis. The girls had Barbies, movie stars, moms, even a Beach Bunny complete in her bikini. Play it up well and you can get a lot of variation, the kids' creativity really shone through. Depending on your kids and their imaginations you may want to set up a few ground rules, no weapons represented and no Freddie Kruger bunnies with dripping blood, yuch!! They also did a writing activity about their bunnies.

This idea is for the younger students. I taught third grade this year and was looking for some easy spring arts projects to brighten up the room. We used coffee filters and colored them with marker then used a spray bottle to spray the filter. The colors blended together and they turned out wonderfully. We then used a yellow construction paper circle and glued it to the middle for a the center of a flower and glued a stem on the back. Believe it or not the kids loved it! Even the boys. They thought it was neat how the colors ran together. I also had them cut out a butterfly (from my pattern). It had the general outline of a butterfly shape but with holes cut in the wings. We glued the filters in between the two butterfly cutouts and wa-la! IT was quite colorful. I also had the idea to do the same thing for the solar system unit. Unfortunately the unit was over at the time. I don't know if tissue paper would work or not. It may not be thin enough to make the colors bleed. Try a test patch and see!Good Luck

I took my grade 3/4 class to a Butterfly Conservatory last spring. After, we came back to school and cut out large butterflies from white paper (I had a pattern for them). I showed them some samples of Mosaic Work. I had cut up hundreds of multi-coloured construction paper squares which students then glued on to the butterflies creating mosaic patterns. They made a beautiful display in the hall!

Take a plastic sandwich bag without the zipper. I think Glad makes them. Fill with cut up tissue paper in pretty spring colours and sequins or other shiny stuff. Staple the end closed. Distribute the tissue paper and sequins evenly and using a clothespin, gather the middle. Add pipe cleaners and googly eyes. Also could add a magnet for when they take them home (great idea for Mother's Day). Good luck.
Joanne

For spring art we did 3 D Spring pictures. I gave them a large sheet of yellow or orange paper. They had to make a large flower by first cutting out circles and then cutting a spiral into them. Each part of the flower was spirals 0 petals, centre, leaves etc. Some kids added those little folded springs to help the spirals stand up. Then they added the sun, ground, different insects and animals. I got this idea out of one of the Mailboxes magazine.... if I'm unclear just email me.
JENN

You could make spring bookmarks. Each child will need a large tongue depressor. Also supply spring stickers, markers, foam stickers,etc. One that I ahve seen is a bunny. Make the ears out of foam and glue to the top, then glue on two wiggly eyes. Draw a nose, wiskers, and mouth. Let the kids color the bunny with the markers. Could also do a frog or a flower. Hope this helps.

If you have acess to a digital camera take a picture of each child. Then take depending on the age cupcake wrappers cut out center put picture in middle then have a vase or stem. They look so cute in the halls and parents love them. You can also do it with a bee pattern and say we will bee have until the last day of school with their faces in the bee. Darling parents and staff love them.

Jan

I used the old "kleenex folding flowers" idea several years ago. I folded several colors --about 4-5 --of tissue paper together, like you are making a fan. I twisted a green pipe cleaner in the middle to hold them together. Then I let the students "pull" the sheets apart. Afterwards I mounted them on a green floral stick with floral tape. Voila beautiful colored flowers. These were used at our fifth grade graduation. They were so colorful.

Another idea is to take bic pens and cut small blooms of artificial flowers and then "floral taped them" on to the pen winding the tape down near to the end of pen. It makes a beautiful gift. A flower pen. I made a bunch and put them in a a flowerpot which had styrofoam in the middle. It made a beautiful table arrangement and then guests got to take one home.

Good luck..A retired teacher who still visits Proteacher
Donna

We just had a fantastic first grade kite day. We read books about kites all week. We sent notes home about each child needing a kite already assembled and also inviting parents to come and fly the kite with their child. A great book is Gail Gibbons "Catch the Wind". This explains the history and everything else kids need to know about kites. We went out the last 45 minutes of the day and it was great. The next day we wrote about the experience. Some classes wrote how-to with order words. Some wrote cinquain poems, five line poems with adjectives, verbs and a sentence. It was a good experience. In May we are going to have a bubble day.

One bulletin board/display the kids enjoy is the one I title "Buzzing into Spring." We paint one side of a dessert sized paper plate all yellow. Then after they are dried, take strips of black construction paper and glue for stripes. Add two googly eyes, two black construction paper antennaes and 2 wings cut out from wax paper. They are very bright and cheery, and except for having to get out paint, very easy as well. Happy Spring!:)

My 4th graders made easy, colorful kites out of a few basic materials, and a little bit of folding. They actually flew great, as well as looked nice hanging from the ceiling. They used colored paper, 8 1/2 by 11 (I bought a pack of flourescent and a pack of pastel and let them choose - enough paper left over to make kites for several more years, colored surveyor's tape for the tail (I bought blue and orange from a hardware store, and let them choose), and a bamboo skewer across the back. I bought a pack of 50, or 100, or something like that, at the grocery store. The only other thing it didn't call for that I would recommend is a gummy thing to put over the hole that you hole-punch to make the paper more sturdy so the string doesn't pull through the paper, if they actually want to fly them. I don't know what they are called, but they are the little round things that you lick and they have a hole in them, and they are to keep paper from tearing. You can buy those at Walmart too. All in all, I invested about 20.00, but have enough material left from all of that to make kites for years to come. And you wouldn't have to use colored paper - you could use white and they could color them. ANYWAYS, I will email you the site for the directions as soon as I look it up. Hope this helped!

Your students would probably love to make their own. In my class I penciled out a large rainbow and let the children use colored squares to fill in the arcs. They really enjoyed creating the rainbow. We made one since the girls were always writing about rainbows. The children worked on it in groups when they went to the art center. We hung it from the ceiling. We never got to it, but had planned to add white clouds to each end with group writing about rainbows. It's always fun to ask the students where rainbows come from. My students thought they grew from special seeds. Good luck.

Hi, We've been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar in my class this week. Today, after I cut many, many circles with the punch, the children made caterpillars showing a pattern with the colors. I put the leftover circles in our art center and the volunteer showed the girls how to make a flower with them during center time. I think this could be stretched to many other ideas if you really thought about it. I've been trying to decide how to make a butterfly out of circles...

I'm not sure what your subject is, but, let's say, flowers since it's spring. Ask the students to heavily color petals with centers to create their flowers. Add a little green paint to a cup of water, so the paint is thin. Starting on the right, brush across the page and watch the flowers "pop" from beneath the paint. Ask the students to brush across lightly, if they "scrub" the paper with the brush, the flowers won't pop!
Halloween ghosts can be heavily colored in white, then washed over in thinned gray-black, so the ghosts materialize right before their eyes. Fish can be heavily colored in a rainbow of colors, with blue ocean washed right over them for an underwater scene.
Best Wishes!

With my pre-school kids I am having them press flowers, by sticking them together with contact paper. This is a fun project with other age groups, I did it with 4th and 5th graders 2 yrs ago and high school seniors last year. You can have students take apart the flowers and make their own (this is what I recommend) or they can just press the flowers with the contact paper. My pre-schoolers are going to make mother's day cards with them.

You could also have them make books for the kindergarten classes in the area/school using the same basic concept.

I've used this idea in the past with younger students, but I plan to use it with my 5th graders this year. I will cut out a fairly large egg shape (about 8x11). Cut 1 inch squares of bright colored tissue paper. Students will plan a pattern and color scheme for their egg. Students will put a square on the egg, wet a paintbrush, then touch the wet paintbrush to the tissue paper square. Lift off the tissue paper and a square of color is left! Repeat until the entire egg is covered. Be sure to cover the work area with newspaper, as the wet tissue paper will discolor table tops.

Leigh,

We once made an interesting rainbow collage.
I provided the children with a wall-sized rainbow outline and they filled in the sections with whatever they could collect in each particular color. Most of the fun was in the hunt and the challenge of coming up with the items. (A good way to recycle snips and pieces from other projects.) They were eager to brings things they had found at home, too.
--you could also create a rainbow from the childrens handprints- either cut from colors of paper or press on painted hands.
Another idea is to collect items from around the room, sort them into piles by colors, then have the children arrange them into the arcs of the rainbow on the floor.
--arrange for different children to wear clothes of a particular color of the rainbow to school. Form them into a "human" rainbow. Take photos!