Leprechauns and Lizards

I love creating a project for children and having them do their interpretation of what I am showing them! So many different looking little leprechauns!

They almost look like they are running or doing a jig!

One child asked where were their arms? I said that they were hiding under the beards!

Our iguanas turned out great! The kids colored their iguanas so differently and each had a unique personality. To display, I taped a large piece of white butcher paper to the wall and drew on some branches and a few leaves with black marker. I then let them loose on the paper with the big fat crayons! Kids love drawing on large pieces of paper. You could do paint but this had been a lot of work creating these projects and I needed something a little easier. When all the iguanas were dry, they were taped onto the paper branches! I think this may be my favorite project so far!

Snakes and Shamrocks

Well we finished our snakes and the kids did an awesome job! We have a clothesline that runs across the room so we wrapped them around it and had them hanging up for all to see! This is a great project if you are doing anything in the reptile kingdom. Make a bunch of different types of snakes or additional reptiles and you have a habitat growing in your class room!

We have finished our shamrocks and added them to the bulletin board. Once the leprechauns are finished next week, we will place them around the board and add the pot 'o gold to complete the scene!

St. Patty's Day Leprechaun

St. Patrick's Day needs a little leprechaun. I designed this for our preschoolers to create in the next few weeks. These projects also help to transition our classroom from hibernation into spring!

Items needed:
small paper plate
flesh colored paint (or make your own with white and a small amount of red and yellow)
paint brush
construction paper in green, black, orange, red and brown or pink (for ears)
medium googly eyes
glue

First we start out by painting the back of the plate. It's easier to glue everything on to the back than to the front. Put it off to the side to dry. (We will have the kids paint their plates on one day and glue another.

Cut out the different parts to the leprechaun. I started by gluing on the eyebrows and the beard.

Then glue on the ears, feet, hat and band. The eyes are glued on last. The kids will have their own version of your sample and it will not match. And that's okay. They are learning to follow instructions and expressing their creative self. That's the main goal! After we do this project, I will take pictures and show the various "interpretations!" (I had more pictures of step by step but they vanished off the camera!)

St. Patty's Day Shamrocks

I would have posted this sooner but caught the creeping crude that goes around this time of year. This is a very easy project to do with almost any age.

Items needed:
pen
white construction paper
BLEEDING tissue paper in green cut into small squares
MAKE SURE IT IS BLEEDING TISSUE OR IT WON'T WORK!
squirt bottle filled with water
scissors

To begin:

Using a pen, trace the shape of a shamrock onto the white paper using a pen. I didn't have a shamrock shape, so I created my own using a glass. It took several tries to get it almost proportionate but this will work. If working with a group of kids, write their names in pen on the backside. The ink won't bleed. Using a marker will cause the name to bleed and make it hard to read as well as bleed to the front of the design.

Bleeding tissue paper is found at most art supply stores. Michaels carries it-usually near the scrapbooking section. Have the kids add a layer of the tissue paper onto the shamrock. With smaller kids, they have a tendency to dump handfuls on. Not much is needed to create the look. You can also use some yellow and that will give you several different shades of green!

Now the fun part! I found a bottle at the hardware store. They are usually in the gardening section. But an old hairspray bottle, cleaned out can also work. Spray water over the entire piece. Kids love to spray water! This starts the bleeding process immediately!

This shows the paper completely covered in water.

After spraying, set your picture off to the side to dry completely. Depending on how much water the kids added, the drying times will differ. They can rip if too wet.

Once they are dry, the tissue paper comes right off with a brush of the hand. (Mine was still wet when I did this) You can see the beautiful coloring left behind! The kids can then cut out the shape and they are ready for hanging up!

We will be doing this project and creating a patch of clovers on the wall. I will make a four leafed one to hide in the grouping. Shh. . .

Shamrock Wreath

Well we will be heading into March pretty soon and that means St. Patrick's Day! So I decided to get a jump on our projects while I had some free time. Today's post is a Shamrock Wreath. The kids can make this and take it home to hang on their doors! I still need to add the string for hanging but it is still drying.

Items needed:
1 large paper plate with the center cut out
brown paint
shamrocks in two different colors (we have a die cutting machine at work so I cheated!) I used 5 for this project
yellow construction paper (if not using foil)
glue
scissors

if using foil -
gold foil glued to any color paper
silver foil and color with yellow markers after gluing to paper
you can also use metallic paint in gold

Start by having the kids paint the entire backside of the plate in brown. (It's easier to glue everything on this side) Put off to the side and let to dry. We will have the kids paint this when they first get to class so we have time for it to dry before art.

I painted a thin layer of gel medium onto the paper (my glue bottle was mad at me so I had to improvise) and then I laid the gold foil on top. (My husband works at a printing company and brought this small roll home that was unusable by them) Run the side of your hand across to smooth it out and remove any air bubbles.

As you can see, because the paper is thin, it curls up when finished gluing. Lay the sheet face down and put something heavy on top to flatten it. After about five minutes, it is okay to start cutting. Using sharp scissors helps too. I used a spool of thread to trace the circles. Tracing on the backside makes it much easier to see when cutting. We don't have a die that small so it's by hand for me.

Here are some of the shamrocks made on the diecut machine. I think it is by AccuDie but not sure. Don't look too closely at the shamrocks as I didn't have the paper completely covered on the die and chopped off small pieces. I decided to use those for my class sample and let the kids use the nice ones. I am such a good person ;) Glue each one down, alternating between the two colors and overlapping slightly.

To finish this off, I glued gold circles (coins) around the wreath. I made a small black pot for the "pot o' gold" and glued a couple coins to the back. I then glued the pot onto the bottom of the wreath. To finish this off, I will hole punch at the top and run string through for hanging. Happy early St. Patrick's Day to you!