Use construction paper and tissue paper to make a spouting whale craft! This was pretty easy to make and lots of fun. Plus good fine motor skills development involved with scrunching up the tissue paper!
Spouting Whale
Supplies Needed:
white and blue construction paper
pencil
scissors
blue tissue paper ( 1″ x 1″ squares)
glue stick
white school glue
googly eyes
How To:
1. I drew a whale shape on the blue construction paper and cut it out.
2. My son used a glue stick to glue the whale onto the white paper. He made sure to leave some room under the whale so he could add the tissue paper water. Then he rubbed the glue stick all over the bottom of the paper and glued on the blue tissue paper squares to make the ocean water.
3. Together, we wadded up the blue tissue paper squares to make the water spout.
4. Using the white school glue, I added glue dots in the pattern of the whale’s water spout and then my son added the scrunched-up the tissue paper.
5. To complete his craft, my son added the googly eyes. He loves googly eyes and, in his opinion, no craft is complete without them!
I really like making tissue paper crafts with my son. We’ve made a lot over the years and I’ve shared some on my TISSUE PAPER CRAFTS page if you are looking for more ideas 🙂
Making a craft or coloring a picture for someone is a lovely way to show that you care. As a mom, I love when my child makes something special just for me. Over the years, I have enjoyed all of the pictures and craft projects that children from my library’s preschool storytime group have made me. Here is a cute craft project that your little one can make for someone special in their life. Whether it is a Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or a craft to give just because, this “You Are My Sunshine” craft is a great one to make!
If your tissue paper is not already in small squares, cut your tissue into 1″ x 1″ squares. Here’s a link to some pre-cut tissue paper on Amazon.
Squish your tissue paper into small balls. (For a simpler version of this craft, leave the tissue in squares and glue the squares along the glue arches.) This was a lot of squishing and I helped my son make a lot of them.
First we need our sun circle. Draw a circle on a piece of paper, or print off my template that has the circle and the words, “You Are My Sunshine!” Glue yellow tissue squares all over your circle. It’s ok if they extend past the circle outline a little — we covered this up by making gluing a bunch of balled-up tissue paper around the circle.
Once your have decorated the circle and its outline, it is time to make the sun’s rays. We alternated between orange and yellow tissue paper. If your child is getting tired of squishing the tissue, make less rays. You can always add more later after a break. This project reminded me of the book, The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Daywalt. The yellow and the orange crayons argue over which one is the true color of the sun! I couldn’t stop thinking about that as we made this craft 🙂 My son says yellow is the true color of the son.
Let your” You Are My Sunshine” craft dry before giving it to someone special! Glue from glue sticks dries pretty quickly, so you shouldn’t have to wait long.
This craft post contains as affiliate links to purchase items on Amazon. To help cover the costs of this site, I joined Amazon’s Affiliate program. If you buy a book or craft item through one of my links, then I get a small percentage of the sale (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for your support! Happy crafting 🙂
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:
You don’t need very many supplies to make this! I love that I had everything on hand so we could immediately start crafting.
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.
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.
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.
Looking for a quick and easy winter craft to keep your preschooler occupied? Try this easy peasy tissue snowflake craft! All you need is a sheet of paper, tissue paper, a pencil, and a glue stick.
Tissue Snowflake Craft
My son loves blue so we made a blue snowflake on white paper. Pick any color background paper you like and then pick a tissue color that will show up nicely. Draw a basic snowflake shape. Mine took up most of the paper.
Help your kiddo wad up the tissue paper. Our tissue paper came in 1-inch squares so we didn’t have to cut or tear it into small pieces. If you are using a large sheet of tissue paper, cut it into small pieces for your child. I bought a pack of pre-cut tissue squares from Oriental Trading that came in a variety of colors; it is one my go-tos for crafting!
Using your glue stick, glue on your wadded up tissue paper balls along the snowflake lines. Once you have covered the lines completely, you will have a tissue snowflake to show off! Add glitter or sequins if you would like your craft to have some sparkle!
More Snowflake Crafts
There’s just something so magical about snowflakes that I can’t help but be drawn to them! My son and I have made several snowflakes crafts together and they have been a lot of fun 🙂 Here are a few more crafts for you to try:
–Secret Snowflake Painting –draw snowflakes with a white crayon and watch your child discover secret snowflakes when they paint over your drawings!
–Craft Stick Snowflake: add some sparkly winter fun to your seasonal decorations with this cute craft stick snowflake!
December is here and I am so excited to make Christmas crafts! My son and I each made a cute decoupage Santa hat craft together 🙂 We had previously made a decoupage Star of David for Hanukah, and had a lot of fun so we decided to decoupage again!
Supplies Needed:
-white glue
-red tissue paper
-3 craft sticks
-small cup
-paint brush
-water
-cotton balls or other decorations
-paper plate (to protect your surface)
How To:
First glue the craft sticks into a triangle shape. Let them dry.
In the small cup, mix a little bit of water with some white glue. Stir until it looks milky.
If your tissue paper is not already in small pieces, cut your tissue into 1-inch squares.
To protect your surface, make this craft on a paper plate. The red color will run once you start to paint the glue/water mixture onto the tissue!!!
Paint the glue/water mixture along the craft sticks. Lay your tissue onto the craft sticks. Begin to layer your tissue paper across the triangle, filling in the entire triangle. As you add a piece of tissue, paint your tissue with the glue/water mixture. It’s okay for the whole piece to be wet. It will dry. Don’t worry if your tissue paper hangs over the sides of the triangle because we will fold it over later. Once your entire triangle is covered in red tissue paper, brush some of the glue/water mixture along the tissue paper’s edges and corners.
Let your triangle dry.
Once your tissue is dry, flip your triangle over. Paint the glue/water mixture along the craft sticks. If any of your tissue paper from the front is sticking out, now is the time to fold it along the craft sticks before layering on more tissue paper. Now repeat the process of layering on tissue and brushing the glue along the edges and corners as you did previously.
Let your project dry completely before adding any decorations.
Once your Santa is dry, you get to add fun decorations. My son used 4 cotton balls to decorate his hat. He glued one to the top of the triangle and 3 cotton balls along the bottom of the triangle. His looked like a traditional Santa hat 🙂 I used a sparkly pompom and some silver sequins to decorate mine.
ORNAMENT: I think you could turn this into an ornament by taping a loop of red and white baker’s string along the back of your decoupage Santa hat craft.
Read Santa Stories to go along with your craft: check you library for my book recommendations.
Make a beautiful decoupage Star of David craft for Hanukkah.
Supplies Needed:
6 craft sticks
glue dots (optional)
white glue
assorted colored tissue paper
paintbrush
water
small container/cup
paper plate
ribbon (optional if you want to hang it)
How To:
Making the Star of David — Glue the craft sticks together to form 2 separate triangles. If you have glue dots, use them to stick the craft sticks together to speed up the process. Let your triangles dry if you used glue.
Glue one triangle upside-down onto the other triangle to form the Star of David. Let it dry and then you can add a ribbon to hang the Star if you want.
Decoupage –In the small cup, mix a little bit of water with some white glue. Stir until it looks milky.
If your tissue paper is not already in small pieces, cut your tissue into 1-inch squares.
To protect your surface, make this craft on a paper plate. The tissue paper colors will run once you start to paint the glue/water mixture onto the tissue!!!
Paint the glue/water mixture along the craft sticks. Lay your tissue onto the craft sticks. Begin to layer your tissue paper across the Star, filling in the entire thing As you add a piece of tissue, paint your tissue with the glue/water mixture. It’s okay for the whole piece to be wet. It will dry. Don’t worry if your tissue paper hangs over the sides of the triangle because we will fold it over later. Once your entire Star of David craft is covered in tissue paper, brush some of the glue/water mixture along the tissue paper’s edges and corners.
Let your craft dry.
Once your tissue is dry, flip your project over. Paint the glue/water mixture along the craft sticks. If any of your tissue paper from the front is sticking out, now is the time to fold it along the craft sticks before layering on more tissue paper. Now repeat the process of layering on tissue and brushing the glue along the edges and corners as you did previously.
Once completely dry, hang or display your craft for your family to enjoy 🙂
Looking for more crafts to make? Check out my Crafts page for ideas and how-tos!
For everyone with a Mickey Mouse-obsessed child, here is a Halloween craft for you! Make this tissue paper Mickey Mouse pumpkin craft with your little one and celebrate the holiday Disney style 🙂 My son loves Mickey and Halloween, so this craft was perfect for him! It is easy to make and doesn’t need many supplies.
Supplies Needed:
1 paper plate
Orange tissue paper cut into squares
Black construciton paper
Glue stick
Scissors
Pencil
How to Make the Mickey Mouse Pumpkin Craft:
First glue orange tissue squares all over the paper plate. We found it easiest to slather the plate in glue and then add on the tissue. For tissue that hung over the side, we just folded it over and glued the extra to the back.
Next, draw eyes, mouth, and ears on the construction paper. (I used a container lid to trace the circles for the ears.)
If your preschooler wants to practice their scissors skills, then they can cut out the shapes, otherwise the grown-up can cut them out.
Glue eyes and mouth on top of the tissue paper. We found it easier to apply the glue stick to the back of the black paper, rather than on top of the tissue paper. When we tried to add glue on top of the tissue, the tissue moved a wrinkled a bit.
Glue ears to the back of the plate. My son and I each pressed an ear against the back the plate for 30 seconds to let the glue set in.
More. . .
I hope you enjoyed this Mickey Moues pumpkin craft! Mickey is always a hit with my kiddo:) We paired this craft with reading one of his favorite Halloween board books, Haunted Clubhouse, featuring Mickey and friends at a Clubhouse Halloween Party! This book is pretty cute, but short. It has pictures of your little one’s favorite Clubhouse friends and fun, see-through cutouts in the pages that keeps children enthralled with this book.
Apple theme books, crafts, and STEM activities for preschool
Fall is just around the corner and I love to do apple-themed things this time of year. Here is a list of some of my favorite apple books for preschoolers and kindergarteners: a tissue paper craft, a yummy apple STEM activity, and a fun apple counting idea to do with pompoms. And no apple themed activities would be complete without an apple taste test — try different kinds of apples and see which one is your favorite!
Apple Books:
1.The Apple Pie that Papa Baked by Lauren Thompson — I love Lauren Thompson’s books! This is a cute story about everything that goes into making an apple pie. As the story progresses, your child will notice more and more animals after the delicious pie! Thompson creates a cumulative and lyrical text that teaches preschoolers about nature and the apple’s life cycle.
2. Apple Picking Day by Candace Ransom — Ransom’s trademark short story with great pictures makes this book a good choice for kids who can’t sit still for long stories. The family goes apple picking and the reader gets to enjoy the fun with them. Preschoolers will get caught up in the excitement as the brother and sister race against other kids in the orchard to see who can pick the most apples.
2. 10 Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss — in this funny, rhyming book, a lion, a tiger, and a dog compete to see who can stack apples on their head and do tricks without the apples falling! While they keep trying to outdo each other, the animals inadvertently find themselves in a bear’s home. The bear is not happy with their shenanigans and chases them out. The animals run into more bears and more trouble. The bears chase the animals (who still have apples still stacked on their heads) into an apple cart! Now everyone has 10 apples up on top 🙂 Your child laugh at this silly story and enjoy the animals’ crazy antics. Plus, this books offers a fun way to incorporate counting!
3. Ouch by Ragnhild Scamell — in this story, an adorable hedgehog gets an apple stuck its back. Now hedgehog can’t fit into its den and winter is coming. The hedgehog’s animal friends try to help and get the apple off, but each attempt ends up with more things stuck to the poor hedgehog. After squeezing, and swimming, and rolling around, hedgehog and friends are running out of ideas. Fortunately, along comes a goat with a big appetite and eats all of the things that are stuck on hedgehog!
4. Aaron Loves Apples and Pumpkinsby PD Eastman — Fall is here and Aaron the alligator loves everything about it. He loves the yummy apples, pumpkins, football, Halloween costumes, and spending time with his friends. When his friends go apple picking, Aaron tells them that he knows a better way to get the apples down. Aaron shakes the tree, causing all of the apples to fall down on him! Oops 🙂 Now all of the apples are down and Aaron and his friends can enjoy them together. This book is part of the beginning reader series, I Can Read. It has short sentences with few words per page, making it a good choice for kids who are learning to read, and for those who do not want to sit through long stories.
5. Apples, Apples, Applesby Nancy Wallace — in this cute story, the bunny family goes apple picking on a lovely fall day. Farmer Miller teaches the bunnies all about apples. Kids will love learning all about apples with the bunnies. The book includes a applesauce recipe too!
6. 10 Red Apples by Pat Hutchins — everyone loves apples, including all of the farm apples. The apple tree starts with 10 red apples on it. Soon, one-by-one, a farm animal comes along and eats an apple off of the tree. The farmer eats the last one, and his wife didn’t get to enjoy a yummy apple! Oh no! Not to worry, the wife knows where to find more 🙂 This story has bright pictures, large, bold numbers on each page, and makes it easy for preschoolers and kindergartners to practice counting apples.
7. Adding Apples by Nick Rebman — this nonfiction, early math book is a great choice for preschool and kindergarten apple-themes. The child in the book leads the reader through a series of age-appropriate math problems with apples 🙂 My son liked counting the counting all of the apples on the page and announcing the answer to me! Plus the pictures in the book do a great job representing different colors in the apples.
Tissue Paper Apple Craft:
Tissue Paper Preschool Apple Craft
To make this tissue paper apple craft, you will need a piece of white paper, a pencil, a glue stick, and tissue paper in red, green and brown (or orange). I drew a rough outline of an apple on a piece of paper. Next I cut red tissue paper into 1-inch squares.
My son and I both scrunched up the red tissue paper squares together — great for preschool fine motor skills. After we had a lot of of tissue balls, my kiddo covered his apple shape in glue. Then he stuck the tissue all over his apple.
After covering then entire apple in red tissue, we scrunched up green tissue. We glued the green tissue balls in a leaf shape. Even after adding the green leaf, my son still thought his apple was missing something. He decided to add an orange stem (I didn’t have brown tissue paper).
His apple turned out pretty cute! We really enjoyed doing this craft together and I love that he added his own creative ideas with the stem.
STEM Activity:
Apple STEM activity — using our 5 Senses
Activities:
Apple Counting:
Preschool Apple Counting Activity with flashcards and pompoms
Tactile counting with pompoms really helps conceptualize numbers. For this activity, preschoolers will add red and green pompoms to their apple tree to show the same number of apples as is listed on their flash cards. I made numbered cards and an apple tree that you can print. This activity can used over-and-over again as no glue is involved. Just draw a card, look at the number, and place the corresponding number of “apple” pompoms on the tree!
For this activity you will need to print off the flash cards and cut them out; print off the tree page; and have 10 pompoms in red and green. Click on the link below for your flashcards and tree:
