Textured Paper Collage and Flower Crafts

Flower craft doubling as great fine motor activity.

So many fun kids projects were created once we started thinking about a sensory bin for Kevin Henkes’ ” My Garden” We needed patterned flowers and jelly bean bush. See how we made our spring craft – jellybean bush here. For our patterned flowers we started with an open ended art project. More on that later. Here is our finished line up. We used household objects like potato masher, scouring pad and sponges to print. To get a textured effect we used powdered tempera paint.

Once the powdered paint dried, it did give us a wonderful textured effect, especially the prints the kids made using the potato masher. The following day my 4 year old and I cut out our textured paper into pieces. This especially was a great way to practice those preschooler scissor skills. I liked the way she tried to cut out a circle- that is something she loves to get it right.

We cut out some shapes with a pattern in mind (flowers for our sensory bin) and most were cut without any pattern in mind . Some turned out to be fun ,quirky ones. My toddler loved to pretend play with the quirky shapes and this one was supposed to be a dragon. A giggling session followed ( oh I love those)

All in all the cutting exercise was an excellent fine motor activity.

We had planned on making patterned flowers and I had my craft sticks and flower patterns ready but my 4 year old clearly had other plans. She said she wanted to do a collage.” Of course kid, that’s the whole idea of hands on projects- to kick off your imagination and creativity”. So yes, she made this wonderful textured collage. This is an underwater scene with an odd , swimming rabbit.

Of course her 2 year old sister HAS to make a collage as well. My toddler’s textured paper collage.

Surprisingly my toddler was the one who was interested in making a flower craft. Here we are exercising some serious fine motor skills and having a great time with this craft/ fine motor activity. She showed interest in this activity but clearly it was beyond her age/skill level. So it was a mom and tot activity. I’d think this flower craft would be suitable for preschool age and above.

Our patterned flowers inspired by Kevin Henkes’ “My Garden”. The basic idea is to start off with an open ended art project using powdered paint and end with a fun cutting fine motor activity.