It’s official, spring is here! While Mother Nature may be singing a different tune, (hello New England snow), yesterday officially marked the first day of a new season and with it, of course, comes new crafting, learning and decorating opportunities-YAY! I absolutely LOVE decorating for a new season or holiday…and the BEST part is…so do the kiddos! I use every opportunity imaginable to let our kids change over the décor in the house in celebration for the newest season. They love making crafts, looking through bins to find crafts from the year prior, and finding new ideas to create items for the house! Honestly, kids are so super creative, that I’ve learned to let go of my “gotta control the perfection” bit in lieu of adorable kid décor. IT’s amazing! Our kids get so excited to see their art work or crafts adorned all over our house; it’s super fun!

In preparation for this season of “newness”, we’ve located some amazing crafting/learning opportunities (that double as awesome decorating ideas) to share with all of you (double YAY!)

Whether you celebrate Easter, Passover or the entering of a new season, we have you covered with five of the most adorable ways to teach, celebrate and decorate the start of this awesome, new season.

Easy-Peasy Foam Eggs

Want an adorable way to celebrate Easter and spring? Try creating eggs using foam pieces or find a kit with all of the goodies already created for you! Here are some fun ways to create AND decorate:

What you will need: (affiliate links below)

• • • • Foam pieces to cut out the egg shapes
      • Glue sticks
      • Cute Foam Shapes such as these:

IF you’re super short on time or just excited to dive in and leave some of the cutting to someone else–here’s another option for you (this is exactly the one I purchased last year–it lasted me until this year!)

Here are two other kits that come with everything you want to create and decorate:

 

From there we just got down to decorating our eggs! We made a wreath and used extra eggs to make a decorative banner above our plain cabinets! So fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why We Love This: A Plethora of Teachable Moments

 

• Builds fine motor development for littles learning how to use scissors or apply intricate, decorative pieces.
• Offers the chance to for children to express creativity (check out the “flying egg featured above left).
• If teaching colors, it provides a great sounding board to discuss the different colored eggs.
• If teaching counting, how may eggs do you see? How many green eggs? Yellow eggs?
• Teaching patterns-use different designs to create patterns such as: polka dots, lines, polka dots, lines.
• Discuss/show animals that hatch from eggs (chickens, snakes, other birds, turtles).

More adorable crafts: for Easter or Spring–Whatever your Thing!

 

Peek-a-boo Clothespin Eggs from One Little Project at a Time:

How cute are these? One Little Project gives an easy tutorial for creating these adorable eggs!

Want to check out this tutorial? Here’s the link! http://onelittleproject.com/peekaboo-clothespin-eggs/

Peek-a-boo Clothespin Eggs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science meets Art and Spring:

Coffee-Filter Flower Water Color Craft!

Awesome idea found on fun-a-day: https://fun-a-day.com/colorful-science-and-art-experiment-for-spring/#comment-179649

Two years ago, I explored the concept of chromatography with our, then, four year old budding scientist. Flash-forward two years later and she ABSOLUTELY can’t get enough of science or chemistry! You can bet this project from fun-a-day is on our list this week!

This great project combines art and science all within an AWESOME spring theme! Exploring color and how they combine to create other colors is just one awesome learning tool that you can go over with even your littlest of learners!

Why We Love This:

The combined learning, hands-on fun! Fun-A-Day breaks down other learning possibilities with this such as:

• Color absorption (rates of absorption)
• Saturation
• Fine Motor Skill Practice-using eye droppers

Other awesome reasons to love this crafty learning experience:

• Accessible to younger learners–I’m not afraid to try this with our three-year old!
• Can be easily modified for older budding scientists.
• Simple to access supplies! I’m actually trying food coloring with this first, then the watercolors!

 

 Catch that Caterpillar Craft!

Adorable clothes pin caterpillar found on teachingmama.org can be created after reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar, (affiliate link below) by Eric Carle, or you can create your own multi-colored caterpillar using a clothespin! (more to come here!)

 

Colorful Coffee Filter Butterflies!

Find this fun idea on Honey & Lime: http://www.honeyandlime.co/2012/03/spring-crafts-for-kids-coffee-filter-butterfly-craft.html

Yes…I’m one of those peop that if I have already bought coffee filters for one fun project, why not keep it going? What’s spring without a mini-lesson on metamorphosis? Well-stay-tuned! Aside from this adorable craft from Honey & Lime below, we have a book recommendations and a way to take this spring learning experience to the next level!

This adorable craft can be created on a separate day as your caterpillar craft or on the same day!

All you really need to transform a caterpillar into a butterfly can be found on Honey and Lime! White coffee filters, paint and pipe cleaners!

Wrapping it Up:

For these spring-inspired ideas, our kiddos took center stage! Most of these ideas are Pinterest inspired but instead of searching, you can always stop by here to grab some quick go-to ideas (rather than searching yourself!). All of these crafts are great to use for learning, crafting, and decorating–a win, win, WIN in my book any day! Stay tuned for some add on ideas to the caterpillar theme!