Gigantic Cardboard Flowers

The recycling bin is such a treasure trove of items in our house.  These flowers were easy for a toddler and pre-schooler to make together and the scale is what made them fun!  

This activity was featured on:

http://www.ohcreativeday.com/arts-crafts-eric-carle/

(If you love Children’s literature, be sure to check out Shannon’s many ideas!)

Materials

• Cardboard (depending on your child’s age and cutting abilities this could be from shipping boxes, cereal boxes etc.)
• Sticks
• Yarn
• Glue gun
• Scissors
• Paint
• Paintbrushes

We always find these items helpful too:

• Smock
• Craft tray

Directions

• Go for a nature walk with an adult, collecting sticks and observing flowers to get ideas.  Our daughter was attracted to the colours of the flowers below and wanted to make bright blooms.

• Cut your cardboard into manageable pieces.

• Sketch out your leaves, flower centres and petals.  Our daughter was frustrated in the fact she wanted to draw her leaves so that they came out from the stem and made a point at the end so I suggested that she put dots at those points and see if that helped in achieving the look she wanted.  Sometimes making a guide helps to suggest parameters for sketching out an item.

• Carefully cut out your pieces.

• Don your smock.  Paint your pieces, focusing on the base colour.  Depending on the paint type, you may require more than one coat.  We used foam brushes for this part of the project.  Allow to dry overnight.  Then paint on your details.  Allow to dry overnight.

• Wrap your sticks in yarn if you like.  Start by tying a knot at one end and then wrapping over the knot.  You might find it easier to wrap around the stick, holding the ball of yarn or you might turn the stick itself.  Push the wrapped yarn down to the end that you started, if you want a fuller look.  Knot the end and cut off the excess.

• Glue the pieces of your flower together and then glue the stick stem onto flower.  Be sure to hold it in place until the glue sets.  As my daughter said, “The glue gun is good for this kind of project as it dries fast!”.  Glue your leaves onto the stem.

• Hang your giant flower in your room and play underneath it (pretending to be a small bug of course!) or create a garden in your classroom!

Purpose

• Re-imagining items.
• Getting out into nature to source materials and observe the changes that occur during spring.
• Taking an item and altering its scale.  This could be a segway to seeing something from a different perspective (E.g., How do flowers appear to ants.)

Safety Notes

• We suggest that you wear a smock and use a craft tray to protect your clothing and surfaces.
• Use scissors and a glue gun with care and direct, adult supervision.