Spin Art Apple Craft for Kids {Free Printable}

Inside: Kick off your fall theme with this spin art apple craft. Toddlers and preschoolers love it because of all the action involved, from squeezing the paint to making the salad spinner go around and around. A favorite in our classroom! 

Spin art is a favorite with children of all ages!

There’s something about squeezing paint onto paper, putting on the lid, and making the spinner move quickly.

You can use this technique any time of the year, just changing the shape of the paper.

Here are some favorites:

Spin Art Pumpkins

Spin Art Spiders

Rainbow Spin Art

Easter Egg Spin Art

Once children are shown how to work the salad spinner, they won’t want to stop. It’s that fun!

We like to kick off fall with the apple theme.

After setting up our classroom, I get out my planner and think of fun, hands-on ideas for all of our free-choice centers time.

Since we love spin-art so much, I created a simple outline that could easily be downloaded and printed, fitting nicely inside most salad spinners.

I then added more ideas to our week, including:

Apple Trees

Puffy Print Apple Prints

Rice and Apples Sensory Bin

Apple Props for Circle Time

Apple Muffins

Apple Sorting

 

Spin Art Apple Craft for Kids

Supplies:

• Salad Spinner (The OXO brand is our favorite due to the clear sides and lid, plus it’s the sturdiest of all the brands we’ve used.)
• Red Tempera Paint
• Green Tempera Paint
• Yellow Tempera Paint
• Free Apple Printable (Scroll down towards bottom of this page for link to download.)

Preparation for the Spin Art Apple Craft

For best results, print the apple outline on heavy (card stock) paper so it’s more sturdy.

Make sure you have enough apples for each of the children, and extras.

If yours are like mine, they will want to make more than one!

After cutting out the apples, gather all the supplies and place them on a table.

Instructions

Place a paper apple inside the salad spinner.

Squeeze paint on top of the apple.

Place lid on top and make the spinner move!

We’ve used a variety of salad spinners and they’ve all worked a bit differently.

Some have levers, some have dials, some have big buttons to push.

The latter is what our children have loved the most, as you can see above.

Plus, this brand has a small button that acts as a brake, stopping the motion.

This alone is a huge hit with the children!

At first your children might move the spinner slowly, but after awhile they will get the hang of it, realizing that the faster they move the mechanism, the faster the motion.

I love the spinners with clear lids so that the children can see what’s going on as they make the spinner move.

Lots of color mixing taking place!

Finishing the Activity

When the activity is completed and the salad spinner comes to a halt, the lid can be removed.

The results will vary depending on how much paint was used and the speed of the spinner, but the children always love seeing what they’ve produced once the lid is gone.

What’s nice about this activity is that once the children see how it works, they can do most of the activity with little assistance.

We kept a tray next to the activity so that as the children removed their freshly painted apples, they could set them on it.

Once they were dry, we hung them on our classroom tree.

Our own apple tree!

After our apples were hung, we sang the song Way Up High In The Apple Tree.

We use my apple tree props from our Song & Rhymes Props Pack.

We also read some favorite apple books throughout the week.

Click below for the free apple outline:

Have fun making your own spin art apple craft!

More Apple Fun

Circle Time Apple Props

Easy Apple Muffins

Apple Stamping