Rainy weather usually keeps most preschoolers indoors and most teachers looking for extra activities to include in their lesson plans. Learn how to make suncatchers for a great rainy day activity that both preschool teachers and students will love! Use this raindrop art activity to build fine motor skills, add STEAM learning, and to create!
Develop Fine Motor Skills
Don’t those suncatchers make a beautiful window display? If your classroom doesn’t have large windows, they also look great displayed on a wall or bulletin board. Kids enjoy making these raindrops because they get to use a pencil sharpener (and teachers love that their crayons get new life by being sharpened!)
Peeling and sharpening crayons is a great way for kids to work their little fingers for excellent fine motor practice. By peeling off crayon paper and twisting the crayon in the sharpener, students are preparing their finger and hand muscles for strong pencil grip later.
How To Make Suncatchers Art Activity
Supplies for this raindrop art project:
- Blue crayons
- Pencil or crayon sharpener
- Waxed paper
- Iron (for adult use only)
- Scissors
You can choose to have the blue crayons already gathered and peeled for the students, or you can allow the students to look through crayon boxes and pick their favorite shades of blue to use.
Once the crayons have been peeled, they are ready to be sharpened! This is probably the favorite part of any preschooler. It is quite satisfying for them to see how they can transform a blunt crayon to a point again! I had my kids sharpen the crayons right on top of a large sheet of waxed paper. As we sharpened, we spread the shavings around to take up space on the waxed paper.
We used a large sheet of waxed paper for my kids to work on together, but you may want to use smaller, individual pieces for each student.
After the shavings have been collected and spread evenly across the paper, cut another sheet of paper equal in size to lay on top of the shavings. Use an iron on the lowest setting to iron directly on top of the waxed paper and melt the crayon shavings. It only takes a quick swipe of the iron to do this. The wax immediately melts and cools rather quickly.
Teachers or students can then draw raindrop shapes on the paper and cut them out.
Use a hole puncher and embroidery floss to string them up in windows for display! These raindrop suncatchers look like wind chimes made of colored glass. Your preschoolers will love hanging and observing these in the windows.
Add STEAM Learning to the Activity
You might have heard about something called STEAM and how it helps kids learn. STEAM is the abbreviation for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math. It’s an integrated approach to learning that encourages students to think more broadly about the world around them. STEAM projects combine at least two of the pillars into the activity to help make learning stick. The great news it’s often hiding in lots of creative projects like these raindrops where we start with the Art…
The kids will be wowed by the colorful crayon shaving transformation in this creative project. And guess what makes that happen? Science! The addition of the warm iron melts the wax in the crayon just like wax melts when you burn a candle. It’s a colorful demonstration to help kids learn about states of matter: liquids, solids, and gases. To help kids understand, you can talk to them or show them some melting ice cubes and show how when you add heat to ice (solid water) you turn it into a liquid. You can also talk about the differences between rain and snow! It’s a perfect conversation for your weather unit.
There’s a bonus STEAM pillar hidden in this activity, too! Technology. When you hear the word technology, you think of computers and electronic things, right? But technology includes a broader definition, too: using a tool to help make a task easier. And that’s what the crayon sharpener does in this project! The kids will see it as a fun new way to use crayons!
Contributed by Clarissa from Play Teach Repeat.
More Weather and Rain Ideas
Check out even more fun ways to learn and play with the weather!
What’s the Weather? Dramatic Play Dress-Up Center
Raindrop Plop: Make an Umbrella
Check out this research-based, playful learning unit in our curriculum shop!
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