Snowflake Collage Activity for Kids

Are you looking for a meaningful process art project to do with the kids this winter? I have an answer for you with this snowflake collage activity for kids.

Have you made snowflakes with your child? Once you get started, making snowflakes can be completely addicting. Last year, when my older daughter was three, we made PILES of snowflakes and this year she turned into a snowflake-making machine about a week before Thanksgiving. The good news for us Californians is that we’ll be knee-deep in snow by December at this rate!

Snowflake Collage Activity for Kids

Step 1: Cut Snowflakes

There are lots of ways to make paper snowflakes, and my favorite tutorial for easy, good looking snowflakes can be found by Maya over at Maya Made. This also happens to be a favorite blog of mine, and you’ll probably enjoy getting lost in the images of her gorgeous farmhouse and handmade loveliness.

We used a pack of precut tissue circles like these from Discount School Supply, but any tissue paper or other thin paper will work equally well.

Step 2: Lay them out over a sheet of card stock

4-year old N set hers out on top of two sheets of card stock that she taped together.

Step 3: Get your Mod Podge and Palette Knife ready

I spread a thin layer of Mod Podge onto the paper to which N deftly attached each snowflake. She was in charge of the layout, which included some beautiful layering of colors. After she placed the snowflake, I added a little more Mod Podge to seal it in place.

Watered down white glue will also work if you don’t have Mod Podge, but I’d encourage you to invest in some because it works so well for all sorts of collage activities.

Step 4: Keep making snowflakes until you’re done

Step 5: If your dad’s birthday is coming up, turn it into a gift 🙂

Or, proudly hang your masterpiece and welcome in the winter season.

It’s all about the process

Like all the projects on this site, I hope you’ll take this inspiration and run with it in your own direction. Or better yet, your child will take it in his or her own direction. Happy exploring!

You might also enjoy

Rolled Paper Snowflakes

Hanging Holiday Stars

Last-minute DIY activities to make with the kids

Fall Craft Ideas: Paint Coffee Filter Suncatchers

By Rachelle 5 Comments

If you’re interested in ways to bring the Fall season to life, today I’m sharing fall craft idea that encourages children to be inventive and think independently.

Present the Supplies as an Art Invitation

If you follow TinkerLab, you know that I appreciate projects that encourage children to think for themselves and come up with their own unique spin on the materials. Like so many of our projects, I present the supplies to my children as an art invitation. Once the supplies are in front of my kids, they are free to use the materials in any way the please.

So, what will we need?

The supplies for this project are so easy!

Here’s the set-up…

Pre-cut coffee filters into leaf shapes. As you can see in the first image in this post, there were a few requests for hearts too. Related to that, this is by no means an exclusive-to-Autumn activity. Cut out hearts, moons, trees, flowers, or even shamrocks. Have fun with this!

Place the cut-out shapes on a tray. We used an art tray, but a cookie sheet with a rim will work equally well. You’ll want the tray because this project can get drippy, and all that liquid will be nicely contained in this walled-off area. I found our art trays at Michaels and spotted something similar over on Amazon (affiliate link).

For two children, you can have them share a bowl of water as I did, or give them each their own water (they would appreciate that, I’m sure!).

At ages three and six, my kids had very different approaches to this task.

As you can see from the dot-covered table, my three-year old had a GREAT time exploring dot-making on the table. My older daughter experimented with drawing veins and rainbow effects, and her little sister soon got on board with similar tasks.

It’s always interesting to see how artists influence each other, and I’m 100% okay with copying as it’s a way of learning.

Kids also like to experiment with different paintbrushes (flat, round, fan, skinny, and fat) to achieve a variety of textures and lines. If you have a collection of paintbrushes, this is a great project to bring them out for.

Drying the Coffee Filters

If your child gets into this project, you will have A LOT of painted coffee filters to contend with. As such, you’ll need to set up a space to dry these gorgeous leaves.

Roll out a large sheet of paper or lay down newspaper, and then place the painted cut-outs on the paper until dry. Because the paper is so thin, they tend to dry incredibly fast!

Once dry, hang the shapes in a window with a bit of transparent tape. Admire the colors as the sun shines through them.

More Fall Craft Ideas

Make a shimmering Fall Lantern

This easy Sticky Autumn Collage is perfect for toddlers and preschoolers

Preserve your leaves in glycerin with Glycerin Leaves

This is our favorite play dough recipe, with a fall scent: DIY Pumpkin Pie Playdough

Make Leaf Sun Prints as a way to preserve leaf shapes on fabric.

And for a whole slew of Autumn ideas, check out the fun Fall Bucket List

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DIY Pumpkin Pie Playdough

By Rachelle 28 Comments

Have you ever made your own play dough? While I’m a fan of store bought dough (it’s so easy!), making your own is a money saver and we can make TONS of it in minutes. And with the simple addition of a little pumpkin pie spice, our dough smells heavenly…just like pumpkin pie!

Also, this is first on our big Family Fall List of 50 things to do this autumn, so check!

Inspired by The Artful Parent’s Autumn Arts and Crafts book, The Artful Year: Autumn, we made this seasonal scent that’s perfect for autumn: Pumpkin Pie!

Pumpkin Pie Playdough Recipe…

Playdough is a wonderful material for building fine motor skills, developing imaginations through exploratory play, and supporting early engineering and building skills. This recipe rivals anything store-bought.

I used our favorite play dough recipe, which also happens to be the favorite of my daughter’s awesome preschool class (and the BEST play dough recipe, hands-down), so I’m not going to get experimental with the dough itself, but we did experiment with the spice combination.

The dough itself takes about 20 minutes to prepare, it cooks on the stove-top, and the key ingredient is cream of tartar. If you can’t find it locally, cream of tartar is on Amazon, of course (affiliate).

Yes, you can find 2-minute dough recipes like this no-cook dough, and I’d encourage you to use them if you’re short on time, but the benefit of this recipe is that it will last for ages. Ages. I kid you not.

Click here to download the free printable pumpkin pie playdough recipe card (PDF)

Ingredients

5 cups water
2 1/2 cups salt
3 tbsp. cream of tartar
10 tbsp. vegetable oil
5 cups flour
Food coloring or liquid watercolors
Pumpkin Pie Spice, or a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cardamom

Steps

Mix everything but the food coloring together in a large pot until somewhat smooth. It will be lumpy. Not to worry, the dough will get smoother as it cooks.
Cook the dough over a low heat. Mix frequently. The water will slowly cook out of the mixture and you’ll notice it starts to take on a sticky dough appearance.
Keep mixing until the edges of the dough along the side and bottom of the pan appear dry. Pinch a piece of dough. If it’s not gooey, the dough is ready.
Place the dough on a counter top or large cutting board or cooking tray that can withstand a little food coloring.
Knead the warm dough until it’s smooth and then divide it into the number of colors that you’d like to make. We divided our in half: one orange and the other white.
Flatten the ball, add a little bit of food coloring, and knead it in. Add more food coloring to get the desired shade.
Store the dough in a large Ziplock bag or sealed container. Unused, it’ll keep for months.

"Smells Amazing" Pumpkin Pie Play Dough | TinkerLab.com

After we made the dough, I placed it on the counter to cool. Meanwhile, my 2-year old worked away at pinching out a real pie crust.

When the dough was cool to touch, we squeezed orange liquid watercolors on half of it and then kneaded it in. For this step, be sure to mix on a surface that won’t absorb the watercolors. My 4-year old wanted to make half the dough orange and half of it white.

Although we had planned to use a jar of pumpkin pie spice in the dough, my 4-year old was curious about using whole spices that we just bought, so we pulled out the coffee grinder and gave it a very loud whirl. Fun! I don’t have a proper nutmeg grinder, but this seemed to do the trick. And the smell of cardamom — I absolutely love it.

We experimented with the spice blend by adding the different spices, first quite cautiously and then rather liberally, and in different combinations. I learned that my 4-year old isn’t too crazy about the smell of cardamom, but loves cinnamon.

My 2-year old was very happy, however, to shake-shake-shake the pie spices all over her gigantic mound of dough. Can you imagine how yummy our kitchen smelled?

After all this cooking, it was time to bake! At this point, our orange and white/tan doughs marbled into something lovely, and we got busy making small cakes and setting them out to eat on a 3-tier plate server.

But, don’t just take it from me that this play dough is awesome. Kelly from Wonder & Create Art Studio tested the playdough with her kids and says, “To get a fall fever fix in without donning a sweater or firing up the oven, make the @tinkerlab Pumpkin Pie Playdough recipe! It smells, feels and looks divine! Thanks, Rachelle, for this recipe and the wonderful emails you send!”

And then she kindly shared photos from their creative play session. So inspiring! Take a look…

The cotton ball whipped cream is genius, don’t you think?

Make mini pumpkins with fork tines and pipe cleaners. Awww.

More Fall Activities

The Great Big Family Fall List (print this for the fridge!)

More Playdough Recipes

Rainbow Play Dough, Tinkerlab

Cloud Dough, TinkerLab

Gluten-free Cloud Dough, TinkerLab

No-cook Cinnamon Playdough, The Imagination Tree

Glowing Play Dough, TinkerLab

Masa (Corn Flour) Play Dough

Downloadable (Free) Playdough Recipe Book, Nurture Store

Candy Cane Play Dough, Artful Parent

Creative Ways to Spend a Sick Day

By Rachelle 16 Comments

How do you get through sick days?

With Spring just around the corner, I thought that maybe maybe maybe we would be the lucky ones who made it through winter without getting sick. Wishful thinking! My oldest came down with a fever the other day and we’ve been holed up at home, gathering our energy and drinking lots of fluids.

I have an arsenal of indoor activity ideas, but to be stuck inside all day long…that’s another story. Lots of tea, patience, and cuddles are in top order.

There was a break in the day when we felt a little better. So we threw on our rainboots for some puddle stomping. Fresh air always helps, doesn’t it?

Bring Books to Life

The other day I fell in love with this article on Little Stories called How to Pretend.The idea that really stuck with me was about acting out books to bring them to life.

To pull this off, I found a big box of stuffed animals in our closet — little friends that we haven’t seen in ages. That alone was thrilling to my kids. And then we picked out a few favorite books with animal characters that we could bring to life with our toys and puppets.

I envisioned that I would lead a puppet show of sorts while reading the books, sort of like a librarian or preschool teacher telling a story through a felt board. But my 3 year old wanted to enact the roles while I read. I live for these moments that surprise.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (affiliate) was especially good for putting all of our toys to work. We don’t have a cat stuffed animal, but my kids were happy to substitute bunny. They really loved this and I’m sure we’ll do it again on our healthy days too.

It looks like we’re home for one more day, just to be safe.

I have a fun Saint Paddy’s Day photo booth invitation set up, but not too many more ideas.

What do you like to do with your kids on sick days? How do you keep them happily engaged indoors all day long?

More Sick Day Ideas

I was interviewed in this article, Screen-free Alternatives for Sick Days, at The Washington Post, where I share simple and engaging ideas (that don’t take tons of energy) such as playing with play dough, creating with stickers, making tape roads, and playing with a sensory bin. Click over for more ideas.

6 Kids Valentines Day Activities

By Rachelle 11 Comments

We’ve been crafting up a Valentine’s storm, which mostly means that three-year old N has been collaging all our self-serve bits and bobs of Valentine goodness into a taped-up, glued, and spackled hodge podge of Valentine craziness. In other words, we’ve been having fun, but it’s not something anyone else would likely take inspiration from or worth blogging about!

That said, we have been playing with an amazing batch of Valentine play dough that’s always good for open-ended exploration and imagination-building. And, for my 1.5 year old, it’s great for hand-eye coordination and fine-motor skill development.

I keep my play dough in a big sealable bowl or zipped bag, and it will last for months. I use this recipe, and it’s hands-down the best one out there for the play dough job. Here are the ingredients, but click over to the recipe for all the deets:

The Ingredients

2.5 cups water
1 1/4 c. salt
1 1/2 tbsp. cream of tartar
5 tbsp. vegetable oil
2.5 cups flour
Food coloring or liquid watercolors. I really like Wilton Icing Colors or Liquid Watercolors (from Discount School Supply), which make gorgeous shades of play dough to match any occasion, mood, or toddler request.

For our Valentine Play Dough Station, I made a batch of white dough and a batch of dark pink, and then the kids helped me loosely mix them together to make this fun, mottled Valentine concoction. Oh, and we added peppermint oil to the mix to give it a nice, fresh smell. This would be perfect for Christmas too…something to keep in mind for later.

I gave my kids a new set of heart-shaped cookie cutters, which proved to be too difficult for my little one to effectively use on her own. But that didn’t stop her from trying! I cut a few shapes for her, which she really enjoyed pulling out of the dough and then breaking into three or four pieces. Some of the hearts were too challenging for her to pull out on her own, so I’d break the dough walls, which helped her remove the hearts somewhat intact.

She also enjoyed playing with the rolling pin and practiced rolling snakes.

I was recently asked which of our art materials is absolutely indispensable, and while there are many, play dough is one of those materials that appeals to a wide variety of ages because the threshold is so low. Very young children know exactly what to do with it, and as children get older their ability to manipulate it and use it for imaginative play grows along with them.

Play dough, I love you…Happy Valentine’s Day!

Interested in more Tinkerlab-style Valentines?

Deconstructed Valentines

Valentine Garland

Self-serve Valentines

All-in-one Valentine Envelope

Valentine Snack

Happy Valentine’s Day!

30 Valentine Activities for Kids

By Rachelle 25 Comments

This mother-lode of Valentine activities for kids (toddlers, preschoolers, and any other hands-on kids) covers everything from cards to treats. With 30 Valentine activities for kids here, this should keep us all busy until St. Patrick’s Day!

If you’re so inclined to roll up your sleeves and make something for Valentine’s Day, here are thirty Valentine activities for kids to get you started…