Spring paper crafts for young students

Here are some charming Spring themed paper crafts made by our after school care students. This group is Kindergarten and Grade 1 students, I believe. Their teachers always hang up their work and make beautiful displays that really enhance the hallways.

The flower craft below is made with colored photocopy paper, cupcake liners and little sticky jewels.

 

 

Paper Flower Craft for Spring

These super cute flowers were taught by a lovely colleague who works in the after care program of my school. She makes a lot of crafts with the kids and has high school students assist her. These were created by Kindergarten and Grade 1 students. I love the contrast of the bright coloured paper with the black paper. 

 

Picasso "Blue Period" Sad Portrait Paintings

This is one of my favourite portrait lessons to teach to elementary aged kids.

I start off my showing a slideshow of Pablo Picasso's 'blue period'. The Blue Period of Picasso is the period between 1900 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors. This was the period of his artistic development when he first moved to Paris and was struggling both financially and had many personal tragedies with his friends. 

We discuss the subjects of his paintings as well as his colour choices and how they affect the emotions felt in the paintings. 

"The Tragedy", 1903

I start off with a basic portrait drawing lesson and show the kids how to add emotions by essentially altering both the mouth and the eyebrows of the face. I have them think of something that made/makes them sad to help inspire them. They draw these on heavy white paper and then painted them using cool colours in watercolour. 

Once they were finished I had them come up to see me one at a time, and they told me what inspired their painting. I typed it as they spoke and then printed out the sentences, cut them into strips and glued them onto the bottom of their artwork. 

Kaleidoscope Abstract Art Watercolour Painting

This is a project my Grade 1's completed a couple of years ago. They had SO much fun mixing the colours. We do a unit on abstract art and this was a perfect lesson to really reinforce the concept. I found the idea HERE as well as HERE.

If I have time before a class (sometimes happens but not usually), I like to lay out supplies ahead of time. So I laid out my paper placemats (large construction paper), 9 x 12" heavy white paper and styrofoam cups. Then I squeezed out black acrylic paint onto large plastic lids. Students dipped their cup into the paint and made overlapping circle prints.

They look pretty cool on their own!

The next class, students used watercolours to paint inside of the circles. Little kids LOVE mixing colours - they tend to go ham with this and mix all the colours together, hence the large amount of 'muddy' colours you'll see! haha! You can restrict the colours if you want, or tell them to choose warm or cool, etc. I just let them go wild with this project. 

Painting these took 2- 40 minute lessons to complete.

Some Grade 1 results: