Tag: Spring Crafts

Animals, Spring

Bug Crown Craft

Jennifer
Bug Crown Craft

Kids are fascinated by bugs and a bugs theme has always been a hit at the library preschool story-times. My son loves to look around for bugs outside. They are often small and overlooked, but when we take the time to look for them, we are always amazed by how many busy little bugs we find! to encourage his love of bugs, my son and I made this bug crown craft with some of his favorite bugs! I’ve included the bug pictures we used if you would like to use them too.

Supplies Needed:

  • bug pictures template (free PDF download)
  • green construction paper size 9″ x 12″
  • markers or crayons
  • glue stick
  • scissors

How To:

Print out the bug pictures template. Color your bugs and then cut them out.

Cut your sheet of green construction in half (length wise) to form two strips. Glue your bugs onto one of the strips.

Now to make the crown! Glue one side of the strips together. Hold the strips up around your child’s head to measure where to glue the other side of the strips together. I always tell my son to to pinch his paper together where the glue is for a few seconds to help keep the pieces from separating when they are bent. We had to add a little more glue to a couple of the bugs because they started to peel off once the construction paper was in a rounded shape.

Let your project dry. Once your crown is ready to wear, put it on a go on a bug hunt outside. How many bugs can you find?

More Bug Crafts!

Egg Carton Ant: paint an egg carton and add some pipe cleaners to make your own ant craft.

Mosaic Butterfly: make a beautiful mosaic butterfly from scraps of construction paper.

Toilet Paper Roll Bee: your preschooler will love making this cute bee craft out of an empty toilet paper roll!

Animals, Spring

Create a Caterpillar Craft

Jennifer
Create a Caterpillar Craft

Bugs are a fun preschool springtime theme! I’ve made tons of bug crafts with 3 and 4 year-olds over the years. This create a caterpillar craft is quick and easy project when you are looking for something that you can make without prep time!

Supplies Needed:

  • Caterpillar template (or draw your own circles)
  • crayons/markers/paints
  • scissors
  • glue stick
  • piece of construction paper

How To:

Create a Caterpillar Craft

You will need 6 circles to make your caterpillar’s body. You can draw your own or print off the free create a caterpillar craft template and have them ready made. Color your circles. In my example at the top of the page, we used watercolor paints. It’s nice to switch up the mediums from time to time, and since water colors dry pretty quickly, I like to use them for crafts. In this example, to the side, the caterpillar was colored with crayons. Both ways turned out cute!

Cut your circles out. Pick out a piece of construction paper to glue your craft onto. Now you get to glue the circles together to form a caterpillar. Slightly overlap the circles as your glue your caterpillar together, alternating the circles’ placement low and high.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Once your caterpillar is glued together, give it a face and antennae. You could also draw on some grass or leaf for it to munch. Pair this craft with Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar book!

Now that you’ve made a caterpillar, it’s time to make a butterfly craft! They my Mosaic Butterfly craft and make a beautiful mosaic butterfly from scraps of construction paper.

Spring

Earth Day Tissue Paper Craft

Jennifer
Earth Day Tissue Paper Craft

Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22. Add some Earth Day fun to your preschooler’s day with this Earth Day tissue paper craft. Ball up the tissue paper and glue in onto the Earth template!

Supplies Needed:

Earth Day tissue paper craft supplies

You don’t need very many supplies to make this! I love that I had everything on hand so we could immediately start crafting.

How To:

Print off your Earth template. We used regular printer paper. However, if you want it sturdier, use cardstock.

If your tissue paper is not already in small pieces, cut it into 1″x1″ squares. You will need a lot! My son and I decided to start with the water first. We both scrunched up the blue tissue paper squares together — great for preschool fine motor skills. After we had a lot of of tissue balls, my kiddo covered part of the ocean in glue and then glued on the tissue. We continued gluing the blue tissue until all of the water area was blue.

Earth Day Tissue Paper Craft

We repeated the process with the green tissue. The green areas took slightly less tissue balls than the water area. By this point, however, we were squishing them into little balls so fast! My son knows what city, state, and county we live in, but this project gave me a great excuse to talk about the oceans and the continents. I explained that we live in North America by the Pacific Ocean.

Once you have your land and oceans covered in tissue paper, let your project dry before showing it off.

Animals, Spring

Tissue Paper Sheep Craft

Jennifer
Tissue Paper Sheep Craft
Tissue Paper Sheep Craft

My 3 year old was inspired to make a tissue paper sheep craft after reading Mem Fox’s Where is the Green Sheep? This craft is perfect for going along with sheep stories and a great addition to preschoolers’ spring craft fun.

Supplies Needed:

  • white paper (we used cardstock)
  • pencil
  • tissue paper
  • construction paper
  • googly eyes
  • glue stick

How To:

I drew a “cloud” shape on a piece of white card stock and told my son it was a sheep.

My preschooler wanted to make his sheep green, just like in the story, so he grabbed a bunch of pre-cut green tissue squares. If you don’t have the pre-cut squares, you can cut your large tissue paper sheet into 1″ x 1″ squares or tear it into small pieces. He covered his sheep shape with a glue stick and then stuck on the squares to make the sheep’s wool.

Next, I cut out 4 rectangles from green construction paper and my son glued them on as his sheep’s legs. Then I cut out a head for him to glue on.

My son loves googly eyes and always wants to use them for his crafts. He added his 2 googly eyes and called his project done. Use your creativity to give your sheep a smile or a cute little nose.

Looking for more fun crafts to make this spring? Check out my SPRING CRAFTS page.

Animals, Easter, Spring

Hatching Chick Craft

Jennifer
Hatching Chick Craft

With so many animal babies being born in the springtime, this hatching chick craft is a great way to incorporate some of that baby-cuteness into your preschooler’s activities. Use a brad to connect the top and bottom pieces of the plate to turn this into a moveable craft. Gently pull the top of your plate and watch your chick hatch!

Supplies Needed:

  • paper plate
  • scissors
  • yellow construction paper
  • glue stick
  • feathers
  • googly eyes
  • brad

How To:

First turn your paper plate into an egg by cutting a zig-zag line across your paper plate. Connect the two plate pieces with a brad on one side. This allows the plate to open and close so you can pretend the chick is hatching! Movable crafts are tons of fun and a great way to show “hatching.”

Next, cut an oval shape out of your yellow paper. This will be your baby chick. Glue feathers onto your chick. Our feathers were large and covered a lot of the chick so we didn’t need a beak. My son added two googly eyes and called his chick done.

Now that you chick as feathers and eyes, glue the bottom part of your chick onto the back of the bottom plate piece. Let your project dry before showing off your hatching chick craft.

For more fun spring crafts try:

Paper Plate Bunny— print off the free template, color and cut out the pieces, and glue them all onto a paper plate to make a bunny.

Mosaic Egg— use left over scraps of paper to make a beautiful mosaic egg.

Torn Paper Nest–tear up construction paper and use the pieces to make a nest.

Easter, Spring

Mosaic Egg Craft

Jennifer
Mosaic Egg Craft

Whether you want this to be cheerful spring egg or an Easter egg, this mosaic egg craft will be a hit with your preschooler. Use this project to help with color identification as you say the name of each color as your glue it on. You can also count how many sides the shapes have too.

Supplies Needed:

  • multiple colors of construction paper*
  • glue stick
  • scissors

*I have a sandwich bag filled with scraps of construction paper that we use for making mosaic crafts. So if you don’t already have small pieces of paper ready to go, cut some out in a variety of sizes, shapes, and colors.

How To:

First: Cut your egg shape— pick a color for your egg. We made ours out of white construction paper. The egg shape was large and took up most of the paper.

Second: Making the Mosaic — My son covered his egg in glue from his glue stick, a portion at a time, and added the mosaic paper pieces. He picked a variety of colored mosaic pieces. He had to really work on spatial awareness as he determined which pieces would fit next to each other. In a few instances, I helped trim some pieces for a better fit.

Third: Complete the Project — Once he was happy with the mosaic look of his egg, I flipped the egg over and cut off all of the edges that stuck off the sides of egg. This gave our egg a more rounded look to it.

Now you have an awesome mosaic egg! I think these mosaic eggs are cute decorations for spring and I want my son to make a whole bunch for me. Maybe he could even do one color per egg and I can have a rainbow of eggs 🙂

More Mosaics

If your preschooler enjoyed this mosaic craft and is looking to make more, check out my mosaic butterfly craft! It uses little scraps of paper just like this mosaic egg craft.

My son also made a smiley face out of yellow pieces of paper and a mosaic gingerbread man craft too! Mosaic crafts are a lot of fun and I love how different each one turns out!

Animals, Easter, Spring

Adorable Bunny Craft

Jennifer
Adorable Bunny Craft

There are so many cute bunnies pictures/crafts/decorations popping on my social media feeds this spring! I was inspired to make a bunny craft by a picture I saw of a rabbit with a flower crown. The flower crown turned a boring paper plate into an adorable bunny craft! I love how this turned out 🙂 Whether you are looking for an Easter craft or a spring activity, this bunny craft is fun and easy to make with your little one.

Supplies Needed:

  • 1 paper plate
  • 2 pipe cleaners
  • pompom
  • bunny craft template (free PDF)
  • glue stick
  • white school glue
  • scissors
  • crayons/markers
  • 2 googly eyes (optional)

How To:

Print the free bunny craft template. It includes the ears, flowers, and leaves that you will need.

Color the ears, flowers, and leaves. While I usually have my son use crayons, the bold color of the markers prompted us to use them instead. After you color everything, cut out your pieces. The designs are pretty intricate so an adult should do the cutting.

Flip your plate over so that the center is now raised. Using your glue stick, glue your ears on the underside of the top of the plate. Glue your flowers and leaves around the top of the plate, making a cute crown.

For the bunny face, you will need 2 googly eyes (or draw your own), 2 pipe cleaners, and a pompom for the nose. We started by gluing on the nose. We used the white school glue to make sure that the pompom is securely attached. Then we folded our pipe cleaners in half (makes a V shape) and glued them on either side of the nose. We put a small amount of white school glue on the pipe cleaners and held them down onto the plate for a few seconds. To finish the bunny face, draw a mouth.

Let your bunny craft dry before showing off how cute it is! While your project is drying, read some EASTER STORIES together 🙂

For more spring craft ideas, check out my SPRING CRAFTS page. Happy crafting!

Spring

Torn Paper Nest Craft

Jennifer

Spring is full of sweet little bird nests. We have several nests in trees around our house. My son and I love watching the baby birds hatch and we enjoy hearing their cute little peeps when their parents are feeding them! When my son was 3, we were working on learning Letter N during the spring. As part of our letter N week, my son learned that N is for nest and we made a torn paper nest craft as part of this unit. I love how his nest turned out!

Torn Paper Nest Craft

Supplies Needed:

  • construction paper in brown and 2 other colors
  • glue stick
  • scissors

How To:

This craft is pretty simple and doesn’t need many supplies. Being by tearing your brown construction paper into pieces. Pick a piece of construction paper for your background and then glue the brown pieces into a nest shape on it.

Next, pick a color for your eggs. We cut out 4 eggs. My son loves the color blue and really wanted blue eggs. What color eggs have you seen before?

Finish your project by gluing the eggs onto the nest. Let your nest dry. Now you have a torn paper nest craft to put up as part of your spring decorations!