How to Make a Simple Wooden Snowflake Craft with Preschoolers

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Inside: This wooden snowflake craft is a perfect way to get a small group of preschoolers working together on one project. The result is a big snowflake that looks beautiful as a window decoration!

I love hanging our art in the window.

So, when I was planning our snow and ice theme, I thought about how fun it would be to hang big snowflakes from our classroom window.

I already had some wooden paint sticks and knew I could add some good fine motor by having the children add small pieces.

And I just knew it would complete our winter themed classroom.

How to Make a Simple Wooden Snowflake Craft with Preschoolers

What we used:

Fluffy paint (recipe below)
Paint sticks
Small pieces such as pom poms, buttons, snowflakes

How to make the fluffy paint:

I put equal parts of white glue and shaving cream into a container and stir. No measuring needed. Just eyeball it.

How to assemble the paint sticks to look like a snowflake:

I simply glued 3 of the wooden sticks so they resembled a snowflake. I used a hot glue gun, but craft glue would work, too.

The invitation:

I put some fluffy glue into containers (aren’t these snowflake containers cute? A Dollar Tree purchase a few years ago), added brushes, and placed one of the wooden snowflakes on the table.

As the children finished their snack, they had the choice of working at this table or visit one of the other free-choice centers.

As each child joined this table, there wasn’t much explanation as to what needed to be done.

They picked up the paint brush, dipped it into the fluffy paint, and got to work.

One of the reasons I chose these large snowflakes was to have the children work together.

These types of small group activities encourage the children to figure out a way to work in the same space (not always easy for 3 year olds), to share materials, and to work along side each other.

I love listening to the conversations that take place as the children work together. Such a great way to work on language development!

I had 3 of these large wooden snowflakes to decorate.

As a small group of children finished one, I placed a new one on the table.

When to add the small pieces:

As the children finished putting the fluffy paint on the wood, I handed them a container of the small materials.

While some carefully pinched each of the small pieces, transferring them to the top of the fluffy paint, others realized it was a whole lot faster to just dump the container of small pieces right on top of the fluffy glue.

Ha!

I’ve been doing this so long that I anticipated the dumping part.

So I made sure to put a small amount of the pieces in 10 small containers, giving one to each child.

That child could decide just how to place those pieces on top of the fluffy paint.

How to hang these wooden snowflakes:

Once everything on the wooden snowflake is completely dry, it’s time to add a way to hang it.

I took a piece of cut string and created a loop. I hot glued the open ends of the string towards the edge of the paint stick, so that it created an exposed loop.

(You can get an idea in the photo below.)