Springtime Garden Art
Do your school hallways have the winter blues? Here’s a bright, colorful springtime elementary art project to cheer up your hallways and bring the outdoors in! I did this garden snail project with my kindergarten art classes, but you could easily adapt this for preschool or even first or second grade.
Start with a Heart
Would you guess that this springtime-themed project actually began as a Valentine’s Day activity?
Back in February, kindergarten students learned about mosaics and created heart mosaics using small paper tiles. The students used heart-shaped cardboard cut-outs (actually packaging saved from silicone heart molds) as stencils for drawing a small heart shape. They chose red or hot pink paper and used black Sharpie so that the ink wouldn’t bleed when we added the glue for the mosaic.
(P.S. If you have a small art budget, fear not–you can get a bag of 10,000 square paper tiles for under $10!)
Around the small heart, they drew two or three bigger concentric heart shapes (looking at the inner heart shape as a guide to help them get the shape right). Then, they followed my teacher demo, using a paintbrush to paint one heart-shaped section at a time with watered-down glue. They added paper tiles in each section. I encouraged them to pick two tile colors and make an alternating ABAB pattern with their tile squares in each section—some did great with this, while others just sort of sprinkled the mosaic tiles willy-nilly, however they wanted. Either way they ended up with some sort of mosaic heart.
I had planned to display the mosaic hearts for Valentine’s, but the artwork just looked unfinished and I knew it needed something more. So I kept the mosaics and finally it occurred to me that we could repurpose them into a springtime garden scene!
Let It Grow!
In early April, when everything started blooming (and here in NC the pollen covered everything!) it felt like the perfect time to paint a garden. The kids painted with tempera paint on a lime green 12”x18” sheet of construction paper. I prompted them to think about a “snail’s eye view”, where the blades of grass and flowers would feel really tall. They added flowers and insects.
The following week, after the paint had dried, students drew and cut out a snail outline from construction paper. They glued the snail body down and then cut out and glued their heart mosaic on top to make the snail shell. A few also drew some extra lines and shapes on the snail just for fun.
I think these turned out super cute! They definitely brightened up our hallways and really made it feel like spring!
If you don’t want to adapt a Valentine’s project, you could certainly have your students make a circular snail shell. Or to save time, you could skip the mosaic and have students color or paint the shell, or even use markers on a coffee filter and spray with water. Please let us know in the comments below if you try out this garden snail artwork, or feel free to share other springtime elementary art projects you’ve tried!
Looking for another cute animal-themed project for preschool or kindergarten? Take a look at our O is for Octopus collage or H is for Hedgehog sculpture!