These fun and festive Thanksgiving-inspired classroom craft projects let students make great use of their creative styles.
A Hands-On Seasonal Trees Craft
Students trace their own hands to create a visual display of trees and foliage changes in each of the four seasons.
PreK–K, 1–2, 3–5
Students will enjoy creating trees and branches from tracings of their own arms and hands in this colorful activity for introducing a unit on the four seasons.
What You Need:
- Brown construction paper
- Light blue construction paper
- 2- by 2-inch tissue squares in red, yellow, orange, tan, pink, magenta, dark green, and light green
- Cotton balls
- Labels, four per student
- Black markers
What You Do:
- Have each student fold a piece of brown construction paper in half horizontally.
- Students position one of their hands and forearm horizontally on the folded paper with enough room to do a second tracing on the same folded paper next to the first one. Students then trace their hand and forearm, twice.
- Keeping the paper folded, students cut out their “trees.” There should be four trees per student.
- Students place the light blue paper horizontally in on their work space and glue the trees onto the blue paper vertically, making sure to space them evenly.
- For the fall tree, students crumple squares of tissue paper in fall colors, then glue them to the branches, with a few to the sides, so they seem to be "falling" from the tree. Write “Fall” or “Autumn” on a label with a black marker and let each student glue it to the tree trunk.
- For the winter tree, students glue cotton balls to the branches and around the base of the trunk to represent snow. Write “Winter” on a label and let each student glue it to the tree trunk.
- For the spring tree, students glue light green, pink, and magenta tissue squares to their branches. Label it "Spring."
- For the summer tree, glue dark green and red tissue squares to the branches. Label it "Summer."
Fill a bag with clothes and items that would represent each season. Ask students to sort the clothes and items by season, then describe and explain which clothes go with each season.