April Showers bring May Flowers: Springtime Tissue art

This adorable Springtime craft is the perfect activity to do with children as we enter April. Flower-shaped tissue paper glued down onto an umbrella shape represents the sentiment "April Showers bring May Flowers". I found this adorable activity via Crafty Crow. The post is from Everything except the Grill. I used it for inspiration, but like most things in life, I deviated from the original directions and did it slightly off kilter. :) I liked that this craft represented the quintessential Spring...with all its rain that inevitably brings the colorful flowers, in abundance. And believe me, we in Oregon, know the wet weather very well...in Springtime, and all throughout Winter too.

Materials we used:

• Paper plates cut into an umbrella shape
• tissue paper in all different colors, cut into flower shapes
• a paintbrush
• Sta-flo liquid starch

1. Have child cover the whole umbrella with liquid starch (with the paint brush).
2. Then have them cover the umbrella by pressing the flowers flat onto the plate. I have them do this one flower at a time. Encourage them to overlap the pieces.
3. Have the kids brush more liquid starch over the tissue paper flowers every once in a while to flatten it out.  
4. All done! Wait to dry and hang up!

 

Keeping with the theme of "Umbrellas" I found a treasure of a book from the library to read with my students alongside this craft.   The Yellow Umbrella, By Dong Il Sheen & Jae-Soo Liu, is a precious gem that is a must-have for any children's book collection.

 

A CD of beautiful piano music comes with the book, and is to be played along while the successive pages are turned. The book doesn't have words, rather it is through the music one can "hear" the story. The children at the preschool looked on in awe, as the pages were shown. It was lovely in an auditory way, as well as visual...beautiful paintings grace each page. I highly recommend this book!

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Have fun, and thanks for visiting!