3D Painted Tissue Paper Easter Eggs

Believe it or not (and it’s hard to believe after 12 straight hours of snow) spring is just around the corner. And with spring comes all the fun Easter activities. Easter baskets, Easter eggs, Easter hunts – all sorts of fun Easter-y things are just waiting to be done. And because I was feeling a little spring fever, I decided to do an Easter craft with my preschooler and Kindergartner.  We made 3D painted tissue paper Easter eggs. There really wasn’t an educational goal to this craft – other than the fact that my children would be using their fine motor skills.

The craft was really fun to do together, and my kids enjoyed how the paint ended up looking on the tissue paper parts of the egg. They also enjoyed placing the tissue paper into the designs on the egg. I enjoyed watching my children talk about each shape they were filling. I had them name which shape they were working on filling (I know I said there was no educational goal, I didn’t say there wasn’t an opportunity for teaching.)

Materials:
One egg worksheet for each child. Click here for the worksheet.
2 inch squares of  white tissue paper (about 50 sheets)
Glue
Water color paints and paintbrushes

Procedure:
First, talk to the children about the shapes on the egg. Then explain that we are going to fill in the shapes with tissue paper and then paint the shapes.

Now, show the children how to scrunch the tissue squares so that they can be glued into the shapes. Let the children explore scrunching and gluing the tissues in place. Explain that the more tissues placed in a shape, the better the shape will look.

Once all the shapes are filled in, it’s time to paint.

This can be done many different ways. I had my children place water (without pigment) on the tips of the tissues and then daub the pigment onto the tissues. I was hoping this technique would create a streaking effect. The streaking effect wasn’t very prominent. I think that was because we were using Crayola water paints, not artist water paints. Well, live and learn, right?

After a while though, my Kindergartner got tired of this process and asked if he could just paint the tissues. My answer was of course he could. He seemed to enjoy just painting the tissues however he wanted. I think in the future, I will have my children color the egg part, minus the shapes, with crayon and then use the water colors on the tissue paper parts.

However, the eggs did turn out cute and are proudly displayed on my fridge, waiting for the rest of spring to get here.  Which I hope comes soon – I’m feeling really done with winter at this point.

Do you have any specific spring or Easter crafts you do with your children to help with cabin fever? I’d love to know. If you have links to specific projects, I’d love to include them here. Thanks.