In this craft, we will take different objects and turn them into plants and animals that we see when winter turns into spring. This activity is great for children aged 3-8 because you can make it as simple or complicated as you like, you get to choose what you make for your spring plate! If your child is younger, you can do this craft in multiple sittings. From start to finish, it usually takes around an hour and a half. Your parents can help you prepare the different objects in the picture and then you can glue them all together on your plate! Once your plate is finished, you can explore how the things that we make feel and if they are different from what we see in nature. This craft is great for helping your children understand the difference between hard, smooth, soft, and fluffy things look and feel while investigating how their environment looks different in spring compared to other seasons.
Supplies:
Placemat
Pencil
White paper plate
One green and one blue piece of construction paper
Five green pipe cleaners
Tissue paper
Scissors
One popsicle stick
3 white cotton balls
1 yellow pom pom
Circle and triangle foam shapes
Two feathers
Googley eyes
Glue stick
One marker of any colour
Paint
Paint palette or a small paper plate
Activity Steps:
Step 1: Before we begin, make sure your craft space is ready to go! We have to make sure that we have all of our supplies at our space.
Tip: It is a good idea to have a placemat to cover your table because glue can be messy.
Step 2: Let’s start! Take your white paper plate and a blue piece of construction paper. Put the plate face down on top of the construction paper. Next, we are going to trace around the plate. Use a pencil or marker to draw a line all the way around the plate, it should make a circle when you are finished!
Step 3: Now, use your scissors and follow the shape that you drew to cut out your circle. You don’t need the blue construction paper anymore, so you can throw out the rest you have left. Next, fold your circle in half hamburger style down the middle of it. Once you have it folded, open your circle up, you should see a line you made from folding it! Use your scissors to cut the line that you just made.
Tip: If you need help cutting, please ask an adult for help! We will use one-half of our circles to make the sky for our plate! You can put the circle and your plate to the side for now.
Step 4: We are going to make leaves. You will need your pencil and green construction paper. Using your pencil, draw a small triangle anywhere on your piece of green construction paper. Then, draw a small circle touching the bottom of the triangle. It should look like an upside-down ice cream cone! Repeat this step to make as many leaves as you want!
For my plate, I used four leaves, but you can choose to make as many as you like! Once you are done drawing your leaves, use your scissors to cut them all out.
Step 5: We are going to make grass for our plate! Since grass in real life is thin and spiky, that is how we are going to make our grass. You can use the same green construction paper for your leaves to make grass. On any of the straight edges of your paper, use your scissors to cut a thin, short line that is as thick as a pencil and is about as long as your fingertip to your knuckle.
Keep making these thin cuts all the way across the paper.
Once you have reached the other edge of the paper, use your pencil to draw a line along the top of the cut grass lines that you made. Then, use your scissors to cut along this line. Our grass is ready! You can put your grass and leaves with your plate and throw out the rest of your green construction paper.
Step 6: Now we are going to make flower stems and pine needles! We need our five pipe cleaners to make our flower stems and pine needles for our tree. To make the pine needles, use your scissors to cut very small pieces of pipe cleaner, about the size of your fingernail. Using another pipe cleaner, make cuts the size of two fingernails.
Tip: Keep adding another fingernail to make this bigger sizes of pipe cleaners.
Do this three more times. You should have four different sizes of pipe cleaner now!
The last size of pipe cleaner we are going to make is for the flower stems. Take your popsicle stick and put it beside the pipe cleaner, the flower stem should be as long as half the popsicle stick.
Tip: When I made my flower stems, I cut my pipe cleaner into five pieces, that’s the most that you will need!
We are all finished with our pipe cleaners and you should have five different sizes now! Put your flower stems and pine needles with your plate.
Step 7: The last thing that we need to cut is the tissue paper. Take two different colours of tissue paper, whatever you like, these will be our butterfly wings!
Remember that tissue paper is thin and fragile like a butterfly, so be careful not to rip it!
You are going to make the same upside-down ice cream cone for the butterfly’s wings as you did for the leaves!
Tip: You can draw on the tissue paper if you want, or just make any shape you want for the wings. All butterflies are different! They can be the same size or smaller, it is up to you! You should have four wings made out of tissue paper. Put your butterfly wings with your plate.
Step 8: Now that we are done cutting, we are going to make the center of our flowers. Since flowers are not flat and smooth, we are going to make a 3D circle for our flowers. Use two or three yellow or orange foam circles that are small, medium and large. Glue the small circle to the medium circle and the medium circle to the large circle. You can make as many flower centers as you want! I made two for mine. Once you are done gluing, put them with your plate.
Step 9: Next we are going to make a bird. Use a large foam circle—it can be any colour you like! Then you will glue a small triangle foam shape to the center of the circle and two googley eyes on the left and the right of the triangle beak.
If you want to see how a bird’s feathers feel, this a great time! Glue two feathers onto the back of the bird’s face.
Tip: Glue the whole back of the circle so that the feathers don’t fall off.
Step 10: It is now time to move on to the super fun part! Now we can glue everything onto our plate. Start by putting your blue sky half circle on one half of your plate, it should fit exactly on your plate!
Tip: Make sure that you glue all of the edges of the paper and press and hold for 20-30 seconds, this will make sure that it sticks!
Step 11: Next, glue the bottom edge of the grass below where you made your cuts. The grass should cover the whole bottom of the plate. Only put the glue on the bototm part that is not cut through so that the grass can still move once it's on the plate.
Once your grass is finished, put your popsicle stick on either the right or left side of the plate, whichever one you want! Tip: The grass should cover a little bit of the bottom of the popsicle stick because tress grow into the ground. Next, you can glue your flower stems, as many as you want, onto your plate. I used two for mine!
Step 12: Once your grass is glued you can glue the different sizes of pipe cleaner pine needles to each side of your popsicle stick. Tip: put glue on one side of the popsicle stick all over so that the pipe cleaners stick.
Use your smallest pipe cleaners at the top and your bigger pipe cleaners at the bottom. Use two small pipe cleaners to make a triangle at the top of your tree.
Step 13: We are now going to move onto the sky! First, we are going to make our fluffy clouds. Use three white cotton balls to make our fluffy clouds. Put your cloud at the very top of your plate and glue the cotton balls right beside each other. Now, we are going to make our bright, shiny sun. On the other side of your plate where the clouds are not, you can use a yellow pom pom and glue it to the plate to make the bright, shiny sun.
Step 14: Now, in the middle of your plate, you can draw your butterfly. Do its body and antenna with any colour marker you want, it doesn’t have to be too big! Glue your wings to the body of the butterfly. Now you can feel how a butterfly’s wings are!
Step 15: Now, we are going to make the flower petals. Use whatever colour of paint you want and put it on a palette or another paper plate, whatever you have! Now dip your finger in the paint.
Tip: It can be whatever finger you want, I used my index finger (the one beside your thumb). Dip your finger and dot your finger onto the paper plate in a circle all around the center of your flower. These will make the flower petals! When the paint dries, it should feel smooth like flower petals!
Step 16: Our last step is to glue our bird to the plate. Since our bird’s feathers are out, it is flying, so glue your bird somewhere high up in the sky.
We are finished making our spring plate! You can play with it and explore how different things feel and see if they feel the same outside in nature! You have made a beautiful spring picture to enjoy and share!
~Made by Katie