We made Spring Paper Flowers process art style and they are so stinkin’ cute I just want to plant them all over LA. Who’s with me?

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These 3-5 year olds worked on their spring paper flowers for two weeks.  Here’s what you’ll need and the how to.

You’ll need…

sturdy watercolor paper (we love Cansen brand)

liquid watercolors

oil pastels

tissue paper shapes

big sticks

yarn

glue, glue stick and duct tape

Steps…

1. Introduce a flower and discuss the different parts with your child. Pre cut large petal shapes from watercolor paper, including circles, rectangles and ovals.  Put them on a tray and invite your child to choose petals to make their own flower.  We recommended choosing 10 flower parts per child.

2. Demonstrate how to color each child with oil pastels and liquid watercolors.  We always talk about water and oil not being friends, so when the liquid watercolors are painted over the oil pastels the oil pastels say “hey, get off me, you’re not my friend.” The kids love it and they see how the water and oil do not mix.

3. When all the flower petals are painted, let them dry and then invite your child to arrange them into a flower.  You can glue them together or use a stapler to get all the petals in the desired design.

4.  Use your favorite color yarns to wrap your stick in yarn.  Start by tying one color to the end of the stick and then demonstrate to your child how to wrap around and around or twist the stick on the table so the yarn wraps around it.  This can be challenging at first for some children.  It’s a great challenge that requires important gross motor skills.  Encourage the kids to keep with it and they will get it in time. These kids were so proud of their yarn wrapped stems. We like to make little yarn bundles so the kids can easily choose one and get right to wrapping.

5. We saved all the flower parts and stem for one week and then at the next class we invited the kids to glue on more colorful details to make their flowers extra special.  We used cut paper and tissue paper shapes for our details.

6.  We also invited the kids to make their petals “dance” by cutting little tiny slits where desired.  We are always up for some scissor practice, especially knowing some schools don’t even allow cutting for 3 year olds : (  Be careful to just do little cuts so kids don’t end up with a tiny little flower.

7.  The last step was for an adult to hot glue gun the flowers onto the yarn wrapped stem and then reinforce with duct tape.  And there you go.  Spring Paper Flowers that make any garden super duper special.

How sweet are these paper flowers?  The kids were so proud.

If you’re looking for more Spring ideas, here is a whole list of 30 Spring Art Activities to choose from.

Happy Spring! xo, Meri