Water Lilies

We started our pond unit yesterday. We made beautiful water lilies. So beautiful, in fact, that I'm going to make you wait till the end of the post to see them. Ha! I got this idea from Creativity Takes Flight. The kids started by painting a small paper plate green. I put out 3 different shades of green.

Then they used dot markers to decorate a small coffee filter.

I sprayed them with water and let them dry. Then I folded them in half 3 or 4 times and the kids dipped the ends into paint.

This is a wonderful trick one of my co-workers told me about. It just gives the flower a little extra somethin'.

When the paint was dry, I crumpled up the coffee filter carefully by gathering the middle and putting a piece of tape around it.

Then I added a bunch of glue to the paper plate, which now looks like a lily pad because I cut out a piece.

And finally I added the flower.

Beautiful, right? I hung them on my door and they are so bright and cheery! I love looking at them. I think it would be fun to float these in a kiddie pool, but they probably wouldn't last long :0)