Let Creativity Bloom With Some Flower Power!

Happy Spring Friends! Even though it is SNOWING LIKE CRAZY here in Ohio right now, I wanted to share with you this really fun craft I did with my firsties! We made an adorable flower garden mural complete with paper plate flowers and wooden bead bugs! Here is how we did it:
     Materials: paper plates, tempera paint, fingerpainting paper, green construction paper, glue sticks, scissors
     Day One: I gave each child a full sized paper plate to paint yellow. ( I wanted to use small plates, but in classic "Mrs. Romo Form" I decided to do this craft on my drive to school THAT SAME DAY, and I could only scrounge up 8 small paper plates, so full sized plates it was! #unfilteredclassroom) I then had them add some orange accents to their plates so that it would look more like a center of a flower. We put those in the drying racks and then began the next step.
     I gave each child one sheet of fingerpainting paper and two different colors of paint at each table. We talked about patterns and then each child painted a pattern of their choice onto their paper. We put those in the drying racks also.

     Day Two: I returned the paper plates to the students and gave them each a precut stem and two leaves. I had them glue those onto the backs of their plates.
     I then passed back the painted pattern papers and had them cut that into long strips. (Some children felt comfortable doing this themselves and some wanted assistance. I am big on having my students do things independently as much as possible, so this was no big deal to them.)

     I then showed them how to fold the strips in half and glue the ends together and then onto the back of the plate.

They turned out absolutely FABULOUS!!!

     As an afterthought, I pulled out some wooden beads and pipecleaners and the kids fashioned some bugs to put in the flower garden. (I am sorry I don't have a picture of that process, but if you look closely in the picture below you can see their adorable bugs crawling through the garden.)
     Materials: various sized wooden beads, black pipe cleaners
     I gave each child two pipe cleaners (one uncut, and one cut into 3 pieces) and had them choose three wooden beads. We then constructed the bugs. We folded the uncut pipe cleaner in half and threaded the "abdomen" bead onto the pipe cleaner. (We turned up the folded end so the bead would not fall off.) We then put on the "thorax" bead and the "head" bead. We twisted the two ends around each other and curled the antennae down. We then added the legs by folding the 3 small pieces in half and then positioning them between the body parts and twisting them so they were secure.

 I hope I gave you a little crafting inspiration to get you into the swing of SPRING! Have you done any fun crafts for spring? I would love to hear about them!