sweet, sparkly flower craft for kids: read, learn, create

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The following sweet, springtime guest post is written by the incredibly creative mom and teacher, Kristina Buskirk, of Toddler Approved. Toddler Approved is a must-read.

Even though my babies are well beyond toddlerhood, I still read Kristina’s blog because it’s top notch.

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Sweet, Sparkly Flower Craft for Kids–Read, Learn, Create by Kristina Buskirk

Learning and creating is always more fun if a book is involved.

We are big fans of reading books and then doing book-inspired activities to go along with them! Each month I host Virtual Book Club for Kids, and I also do a children’s book themed co-op preschool with some friends.

I am always on the lookout for awesome book inspired ideas and have fun creating a few new ones as well.

Last week we read Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert and created a super simple sparkly flower craft to go along with it using muffin tin liners.

Planting a Rainbow is a darling book that helps kids understand how to plant seeds and grow a beautiful garden. The illustrations in the book are gorgeous, and the story introduces flowers in all the colors of the rainbow. My little students always enjoy chiming in as we read each page, look at the colors, and say the color names.

Since my little preschool students loved talking about colors and making colorful things, we decided to make sparkly & colorful muffin tin liner flowers.

Materials Needed: glue, colorful muffin tin liners, cardstock, green paper, scissors, markers, and sequins.

How to make sparkly flowers…

We started by coloring the inside of the muffin tin liners with markers, and then we cut thin pieces of green paper to make stems and leaves.

Next, we glued the stems, leaves, and muffin tin liners to our colorful cardstock.

Finally, we added a bunch of glue to the center of the muffin tin liners and then kids sprinkled (or dumped) sequins inside their muffin tin liners to make them extra colorful.

As we created, the kids talked about their flowers and decided what type they wanted to make, based on the new flower words they’d learned in Planting a Rainbow. I loved listening to the discussions about colors and color mixing as they covered their muffin tins in marker and sequins.

After we finished our art project and put it aside to dry, we read Planting a Rainbow again, and it was neat to the see the new connections the kids made with the book after having had a creative book inspired crafting experience.

There are so many simple ways to help kids connect with books while also creating and having a lot of fun.

Here are five of our other favorite books and some simple creative activities to do along with them…

Experiment with Fizzy Footprint Science along with The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss

Create a Felt Caterpillar Busy Bag to go with The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Make some Chocolate Gruffalo Crumble as you read The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

Go on a Name Hunt with 10 Apples Up On Top by Dr. Seuss

Play with Gum along with David Goes to School by David Shannon

You can find even more book inspired crafts and activities on our Children’s Book Related Crafts & Activities Pinterest Boar

Thank you, thank you, Kristina! You ROCK. We appreciate your post and expertise!!

Kristina is a mom of three and the founder of Toddler Approved, a blog where she helps parents capitalize on teachable moments in everyday life and motivates them to discover, create, and learn with their children.
You can connect with Kristina on on Facebook, Google +, Pinterest, and Twitter.

This post is part of our new Rockstar Sunday posts. Each week, I will highlight one ‘rockstar’ in the parenting and education field. These posts? Seriously awesome.

Have something you’d like to share that in some way relates to fun learning, school, technology, education, or parenting? For a short time we’ll be accepting Rockstar Sunday guest posts.

The response to our Rockstar Sunday feature has been overwhelming. I am in awe of the ideas, submissions, and shares!

Having been in the blogging space for 5+ years, we know for sure that our readers are always up for fresh and fun ideas on literacy, math, technology, parenting, and learning in the every day. They love crafts, hands-on teaching ideas, printables, cooking with kids, and anything that makes their job as parents easier, better, and more fun.

You don’t have to have a blog of your own–just cool ideas to share! We look forward to hearing from you!

other posts in the series: