Happy almost Mother’s Day! I wanted to get this out just under the wire in case you wanted to try super sweet idea Eryn put together for our 3-5 year old classes, for a special Mother’s Day gift or teacher gift or someone special gift. These little planters are the perfect spring art project for 3-5 year olds. Best of all they are so much fun to make.

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This was a two part project. You’ll need to allow for the planters to dry. There is also no wrong or right way to make these spring planters. What I love about the process we used is that it is jam packed with process several experiences that kids will love and feel great success with.

You’ll need…

little (or big) terra-cotta planters

droppers or pipettes

tempera paint

sticks and yarn

play dough (here’s my favorite recipe), air dry clay and feathers

little rocks (optional) and small pieces of strong paper to write notes on.

Steps

1. Prepare tempera paint in your desired colors in little jars. We always use baby jars. Put a few squirts of paint inside and then add a little water. Demonstrate how to squeeze drips of paint on the upside down planter in different colors. Each paint jar should have it’s own dropper to keep the colors clean. Kids will love this! They can spend 30 minutes just on this step alone.

2. Once your planter is completely dry (after 24 hours) invite your child to wrap a couple of small sticks in their favorite yarn colors. Wrap wrap wrap. You can use a little glue gun spot at the end to hold down the yarn.

3. Once you have your sticks you’re going to help your child create a little air dry clay birdie. We separated ours into two parts, a bigger ball and a smaller ball. Kids can attach the two and sort of pinch the smaller one to create a beak and then push in beads or buttons or sequins for the eyes. Then stick in feathers for their wings.

4. Next, we give the kids a big ball of play dough to play with and then push into their planter as the soil. Then they plant their sticks by pushing them inside the planter and adding on the birdie.

5. Last steps are to add special notes and little rocks to the soil. The little notes are a great opportunity for your child to sign their name and either write or dictate a special note to their loved one. Punch a hole in the paper and tie it on the branches. And they’re done!

These kids were so incredibly proud of themselves. They just loved their little spring planters and so did their moms.

Just look at the love.