Snowflake Silhouettes

The snow that arrived earlier this week in full force – the storm that left us almost a foot of snow – has come and gone.  I believe I said it was here to stay.  But this morning we have green grass.  A blessing really – a second chance for us newbie farmers to REALLY get ready for winter.

We have added a bundle to our to-do list, and hope we have a few days to tackle most of those things, at least those of high priority, before we are covered in snow again.

And while our days are busy and full, and never seem to be quite long enough — there is always (always) time for crafting.

I saw these beautiful snowflake silhouettes on Pinterest, and traced them back to this post on Kinderkraze.  Since we are still loving paper snowflakes right now, I thought this would make a lovely craft for my little ones.

We began by cutting out snowflakes from black construction paper.  We just folded the paper in quarters so it wasn’t too thick for my little ones to cut through.  They are getting rather fancy, these paper snowflakes of ours!

Next, we laid out a piece of contact paper.  It’s a wise idea to cut the snowflakes first and then put down the sticky contact paper – otherwise you may end up with oodles of little paper bits all over your sticky paper.  And yes, I know this first hand.

My little ones then stuck the black snowflakes onto the contact paper.

We then took blue tissue paper (colour choice based on what we had down in the craft cupboard, though it does look rather wintery!) and began cutting it into pieces.  I cut out some long strips and the boys cut those strips into smaller squares and rectangles.

Ben (who is 2) did some cutting with scissors, but after a few attempts opted to rip the tissue paper into squares.  Still wonderful for strengthening little hands and working on fine motor skills.  My 4 year old Sam persevered with the scissors, a favourite activity of his these days, using scissors.  Shockingly we have stuck to paper … no hair or brothers have been harmed. {Yet}

Sam then placed the tissue paper onto the contact paper.  He quickly realized that the tissue paper wouldn’t stick to the snowflakes, and wouldn’t stick on top of other pieces of tissue paper.  There was a lot of 4 year old problem solving and strategy involved in the tissue placement.

It took awhile to cover all of the contact paper.  Sam would work at it for awhile and then run off for another activity before returning to place a few more pieces.

It took awhile longer because Sam kept checking windows in our house to see which one this suncatcher would look best in.  I did mention a few times that we could decide that once the craft was done (it may have been close to dinnertime, and the project may have been on the kitchen table).

But when this art project was finally done – it was very pretty!  And looks so lovely in the very special window which was eventually decided upon.

I think we will do more silhouette pictures this winter season – maybe with a deer silhouette, or a snowman.

They are beautiful, full of learning, and rather calming to create as well.  Definitely all things I look for in an activity — especially the last one, calming – always a bonus with my wild ones.

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