With spring coming, weather is finally looking better and brighter. It’s perfect time of the year to head outside for a walk, pick few fallen tree branches and use recycled egg cartons to make spring blossom with kids!
This lovely multicolor flower craft will surely bring joy to your home and you can use it to hang and display seasonal Easter decorations.
Materials to make spring blossom
To make spring blossom from egg cartons, you will need few items:
- tree branches
- egg cartons (from recycle bin)
- poster paint or tempera paint (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom)
- paint brush (we love these: United States | Canada | United Kingdom)
- glitter pom poms (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom)
- glue
- scissors
- vase
Before crafting, you will need to take a walk in a local park with kids and collect few branches laying on the ground. Let children choose the ones they like the most. Of course, make sure to take into account the size of the vase you will use to display your finished spring blossom. You don’t need much. Three or four branches will be more than enough.
How to make spring blossom from recycled egg cartons
Now that you have twigs, it’s time to sit down and enjoy crafting time!
Firstly, kids will need to prepare the egg carton flowers for coloring. Let them use scissors to cut the flowers in any way they like – some flowers may have only 4 petals and some might end up with the shape of dandellion flower heads. The biggest variety, the better. In fact, it would make cutting even more fun if you challenge them to cut each flower differently!
In case you have a toddler who still didn’t conquer scissors fully, you can prepare egg carton flowers in an advance. After all, cardboard is not as easy to cut as paper.
When egg carton flowers are cut, it’s time for painting. We use no-spill paint cups because it’s easier to manage the spills and all the mess that comes with painting. However, anything you have on hand will do.
Let your child choose which colors they will use for their spring blossom. Of course, they can go with all white or all pink (for cherry blossom). My toddler wanted to make multi-color blossom. As you can see from the images, she even used different colors inside and outside of the flower head! She said that flowers like this look more fun and bring more joy.
Once the flower heads are painted and paint has dried, let a child glue pom poms in the middle of the flower. For this part, use liquid glue. Make sure to tell them they need to press and hold pom poms for a little while in order for pom poms to remain glued.
We used glitter pom poms in different colors. Again, my daughter had a full freedom to choose which color pom pom goes inside which flower. Some of the flowers ended without pom poms because we had a limited number. That’s ok as well. Child can glue crunched colored paper or leave it empty. Offer the options and let them decide!
The last part is attaching flowers to branches. For this part, I used glue gun. We tried using the same liquid glue as we used for attaching pom poms. However, it didn’t hold and flower heads kept falling. So, I decided to attach them using glue gun. My daughter assisted and told me where to glue which flower.
Displaying Spring Blossom
We had a lovely ceramic vase and used it to display our spring blossom. You can use any vase you already have on hand, as long as it’s opening part is wide enough for all branches to fit inside.
We also decided to use our spring blossom for Easter! So, I used few push pins on branches and my toddler used them to hang Easter decorations – eggs and little bunnies.
Extend Craft with a Book
It’s always a good idea to connect reading a book with any activity you do with your toddlers and preschoolers. It helps them learn and understand different words which might be new to them.
Book about a child and mother planting a rainbow in their garden and watching it bloom. The illustrations are fantastic and vibrant in color! The book is very sturdy and well made and will clearly stand up to multiple readings per day. Find the book Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
Who has stripes? Is it the bee? Or is it the ladybug? Turn the wooden pieces to answer the questions in each scene. This book builds communication skills and supports fine motor coordination while introducing garden friends. Find the book In the Garden by Redd Byrd here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
Fletcher enjoys the sunny weather and the warmth of spring. But when he stumbles across snowy flakes gently floating to the ground, he spreads the news of winter’s return to all his friends. But spring is full of wonderful surprises for Fletcher and his friends. Find the book Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms by Julia Rawlinson here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
See our selection: Best Spring Board Books for Toddlers
What else can you kids do in spring?
Here are few additional Spring ideas for those of you who collect egg cartons in a recycle bin:
- turn egg carton into flower bed for your spring garden with flowers made also from egg cartons,
- use it to make a fun egg racing game (you will also need plastic eggs to make game pieces),
- plant carrots in an egg carton to practice fine motor skills.
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