Kinder'garden' Mural

My cooperating teacher taught me how to do this project with Kindergarten when I started student teaching. It's super cute, but also really does teach some good skills and the results spruce up the hallways for Spring! Yay! It's become an annual Kinder project.

Teacher Prep for Garden: Cut a large piece of blue (we were out so I had to use white) butcher paper for background....cut green 9x18 paper into 4 inch chunks and 'fray' the edges to create grass. Cut two large clouds and write class name in the cloud.

Teacher Prep for Flowers: Cut strips of green paper for stems, chunks of paper for petals and leaves. Then smaller squares for centers.

This year I decided to organize my color scheme by giving them 5 colors to choose from for petals and only two colors for centers to keep life easier.

We read the book "Planting a Rainbow" by Lois Ehlert.

 

We start by cutting out the center..I let them use a small dixie cup to trace a circle.

Then we do an art magic trick by folding a piece of paper in half, drawing 3-4 petals and cutting them out to get double the petals! Tada!

 

(math integration...counting by two's)

Glue center to stem...glue petals to center...then use the same magic trick to make leaves.

 

Then we put dots of glue on the back and "plant" the flowers in the garden. Super fun and only takes one class period.

After they plant one flower, they can make one more to take home or plant again....OR they can make bugs for the garden...which always turn out really cute.

 

 

 

Here you can see the prepped garden...