Making time to create art can be a great way to spend time together with children.  Not only is this an opportunity to connect and be together, children also learn a great deal when working on art projects.

Creating art projects together with young children is an opportunity to practice skills like:

• motor coordination
• patience
• sharing & taking turns
• recognizing shapes, colors, numbers and letters
• imagination
• problem solving

My daughter and I recently created some spring flowers from egg cartons. The end result was really cute and perfect for the spring season.

Materials

• Empty Egg carton
• Scissors
• Glue
• Water colors
• Paper

Instructions

1. First, we cut the egg carton down the middle.

2. Next, we cut the carton dimples to resemble a flower. We tried a  few different ways, it looked best to my daughter when there were only four petals. There was a bit of frustration at this initial stage, too, as the cutting was tricky, but after a few tries, my daughter figured out which way to hold the carton so it wouldn’t fall down.

3.We also cut the side of the carton into stem and leaf shapes. My daughter is almost 4, and she really liked cutting leaf shapes and the rough outline of the flowers and then asked me to round them up a bit.

4.After we cut about 20 flowers, we decided to paint them with water colors. For some contrast, we chose to use yellow in the center and then paint the  petals different colors. Some petals got mixed colors too. One flower center stayed white – “Oh, that’s on purpose,” said my daughter.

5. Last, we painted the stem and leaves green (some of them were painted orange, too!)

6. Once dry, we organized the flowers onto a sheet of paper and glued them.

Do your children enjoy making art projects with you?

Peace & Be Well,

Ariadne