Got the winter blues? No snow to enjoy winter? These cute snowmen are sure to brighten your day! Children as young as 3 years old will enjoy making this easy snowman craft with materials you might already have at home!
MATERIALS:
- Liquid watercolors (or food coloring)
- Spray bottles
- Sturdy paper or canvas (we used left over matboard from our local framer)
- Tarp (or big cardboard to protect your floor)
- School glue
- Collage materials (feathers, sequins, glitter, pompoms, pipecleaners, eye stickers, and shape stickers etc.)
- Scrap felt- or foam shapes, wool (or cotton balls)
- Pre-cut snowman circle shapes and hats
- A few small twigs
- Water
STEP 1: SPRAY WITH WATERCOLORS
Spread out a tarp on your floor, and place your papers on it. Fill your spray bottles (one for each child) with water and add a few drops of different colored watercolors until you like the hue and intensity of the color. Watercolors will look a little less vibrant when they dry.
Show the children how to use the spray bottles: Spray from the top, not from the side. Do only a few spritzes at a time. Ask a friend to trade colors with you. Pay attention not to spray in the same area over and over (puddles!). Invite the children to spray all over their paper until there is no white left.
Tip: Encourage color mixing and discuss how we can ask each other kindly for turns with the colors, set a timer to share, work out a trade or establish that it’s ok to say “I’m using this color right now, you can have it when I’m done!”.
STEP 2: COLLAGE
Prepare an array of collage materials as well as pre-cut paper circle shapes and hats for the children to build and decorate their own snowmen! Invite the children to pick up their colored papers to join you at the table, or another area on the floor where you have prepared your collage materials. Show how to squeeze a small amount of glue onto the paper, and press the circle snowman shapes into it. Count: “How many snowballs does it take to make a snowman?” Let the children glue and decorate their snowmen with the felt shapes, pompoms, stickers, and sequins etc.
Aren’t they just adorable???
STEP 2: MAKE MORE SNOWMEN!
Because we couldn’t stop, and we can never do just one thing… ;). Now go build a real snowman! Or make some out of clay, play dough or salt dough like we did… just set out some cardboard to work on, and an array of loose parts to stick into the play dough! We used cut up straws, pipe cleaners, beads, buttons, ribbons, small twigs, googley eyes and sequins. You can show the children how to roll a snowball and then just let them go for it! Voilà!
This is meant to be a child-led, open-ended, simple but engaging activity that stimulates your child’s imagination, offers the freedom to create, invent, and inspires to find new ways of doing things as well as building fine and gross motor skills!
Have fun!
♥ Claudia.
