Symmetrical flowers

You need:

1. transparent drying hobby glue
2. liquid watercolour
3. brushes
4. white cardboard cut in squares of 20 by 20 cm

After a short explanation about symmetry, students draw a symmetrical fantasy flower on their cardboard. When ready, the lines have to be traced with glue. After drying (take a day for this), the several flower parts are painted with liquid watercolour. The glue will resist watercolour.

April showers will bring us flowers

You need:

1. white drawing sheet
2. water colour paint
3. ruler
4. white crayon or oil pastel
5. paint brush
6. water

Characteristicly Dutch weather in spring is a weather type with showers, alternated with sunny periods. Those typical spring showers are called 'Maartse buien' (March Showers) in Holland, while English meteorologists speak about 'April showers who bring us flowers'. In this lesson children will draw typical spring flowers (tulips, daffodils etc.) during a rain shower.
Sketch some spring flowers on a white sheet. Make sure your lines are extremely thin. Use your ruler to draw white crayon lines with about one centimeter between them. Make sure your crayon has a sharp point. Paint your drawing with watercolour paint. Use a lot of water to make bright colours. The crayon will resist the water paint, so your shower will be very clear!

Flowers in fingerpaint

You need:

1. tempera paint
2. saucers
3. white drawing sheet A2 size cut in three
4. coloured paper for background
5. green crepe paper
6. scissors
7. glue

Give all students a saucer with tempera paint in blue, yellow, red and white. Let them experiment with mixing colours with their fingers. Show them that if they mix to many colours together, they'll get aa kind of brown. Mix blue and yellow to show this makes green. Show them to make colours lighter using white. Children can practice this on a scratch sheet.

Every child gets a strip white drawing paper (A2 size, cut lengthwise in three parts). Fingerpaint your own flower. Realistic or not, it's all right. The only restriction: the stalk and leaves must be green. The flower should be as high as the sheet.

Cut the flower leaving a white edge from about 0,5 cm. Paste all flowers on a coloured background. Cut a strip of grass from crepe paper and paste this in front of the flowers.

A field full of daisies

Made by Annika, 10 years old

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A3 size
2. tempera paint in blue, green, white, yellow and red
3. egg boxes or saucers
4. brushes
5. jars with water
6. newspapers
7. paper towels
8. coloured paper for background

Daisies (bellis perennis) are, until it freezes, found in lawns. View pictures of daisies and discuss what they look like. Children start to paint the grass. They have to make their own green colours by mixing blue, white and yellow. Paint the entire sheet with small vertical strokes.

When the grass is dry, the daisies can be painted. For on the field daisies are larger bigger then further away. Use a small brush and a lot of paint, to make sure the green grass is really covered with the white paint of the flower. Use a different colour green for the stalks or take the unmixed colour green directly from the bottle. Paint the hearts of the flowers with big yellow blobs.

Paste the artwork after drying on a matching background after drying.

Made by children from 9-12 years old

Tulips; spring is coming!

By Shanti, 11 years old

You need:

1. a bunch of tulips
2. drawing paper A4 size
3. white oil pastels
4. water paint
5. brushes
6. jar with water
7. coloured paper for background
8. glue

What does a tulip look like? What can you tell about the stem and the leaves? What do the petals look like? Give every group a vase with some tulips. The children have to draw a horizon line first about a third from the bottom of the sheet, the lawn. In this lawn tulips has to be drawn, using white oil pastels. Look carefully at the tulips in the vase. The tulips must overlap and do not stand in a tight line. Colour the flowers with water paint. The oil pastel will resist the paint, so the white lines remain. Paint the lawn and the air also. Paste the work after drying on a coloured background.

Beautiful anemones

You need:

1. white drawing sheet A4 size
2. tissue paper in different colours
3. brush
4. can with water

With tissue paper you can make beautiful flowers without painting! In this lesson I chose anemones, but any flower will work. To make an anemone, fold a tissue paper three times until you have a rectangle. This rectangle has six lows now. Cut two petals out of this rectangle; this makes twelve petals totally. Six petals make one anemone. Cut petals from different colours tissue paper. Cut small and bigger ones. Take the white sheet and wet the place for the first flower with a brush. Put the petals one by one around an imaginary white circle (this is for the heart of the flower) on the wet spot. The petals will tighten themselves on the wet drawing sheet. Stich all petals this way. Overlap is allowed, working on the edge too. Cut little circles (flowerhearts) out of black tissue paper and stick them with water. The tissue paper has started 'bleeding' yet. The brighter the colour of tissue paper, the better it bleeds. Light colors bleed less. The colours of the tissue paper will blend together. If all is well, you'll see rays from the black heart into the petals. If not, wet the flowers again with a brush and water. Be careful, petals might shuffle. Let the artwork dry a little. When it's still moist a bit, pull of all petals. Your beautiful anemones are ready!

Anemones with tissue paper

Print, without tissue paper

Sun(flower)

You need:

1. white drawing sheet from 16 by 16 cm
2. felt pens
3. ruler
4. grey pencil
5. a pair of compasses

Divide the sheet in four compartments from 8 by 8 cm. Use a pair of compasses to draw a circle from the center with a radius from about 5 cm. Draw a frame from 1 cm within the outside of the sheet. Draw sunflower petals (or sunbeams!) around the circle.

Colour from inside to the outside. Choose two colours. Start at one of the quarters of the circle. Colour this with colour 1. Colour the petals with colour 2 and the background with colour 1. Finish with a part of the frame in colour 2. Do the same with the next quarter of the drawing, making sure the colours will alternate.

Guardian angels of the woods

You need:

1. white drawing paper
2. colour pencils

After telling a story about the protector of the woods, who hide themselves between the trees and bushes, children draw their own wood guardian angels. Those can be anything they think of: an angel, a ghost, a fairy or maybe even an animal. The colours should of course be natural colours: green, yellow, red, brown and mixtures of them. Hide your guardian angel between the trees, drawing a lot of leaves around it.

Waterlilies in the style of Monet

You need:

1. tissue paper in different colors
2. white drawing sheet (A4 size)
3. glue

Claude Monet was a French painter and founder of French impressionist painting. Impressionistic paintings are a kind of snapshots, giving a quick impression. Up close, it will only show spots and streaks, at a distance you see that these spots together represent an image.

After viewing a number of waterlily paintings by Monet, children will make their own waterlilies using tissue paper. To get the spotty Monet effect, the tissue paper should be torn into pieces. For the background, the water, children tear pieces of blue and or green tissuepaper and paste it on their sheet. The flowers are also made of torn pieces of tissue paper. It is important to work from big to small: first the background, then the pieces of the large flowers, and over them the heart of the flower. Assign the children that they use minimal of glue to avoid a messy painting.

Spring flowers

You need

1. white drawing paper
2. wasco crayons
3. tempera
4. brushes

Children draw spring flowers with black crayon. The whole sheet should be filled with flowers. Colour the flowers with tempera. Paint the background in a bright spring colour.

Hyacinths

You need:

1. glossy paper
2. crepe paper
3. glue
4. white drawing sheet

Children have to draw the outside of a hyancinth on their sheet with gray pencil . The flower has to be filled with crumled pieces of crepe paper, who are glued on the sheet. From torn pieces of the green glossy paper they paste the leaves.

A field full of sunflowers

By student of grade 4

You need:

1. oil pastel crayons
2. coloured ink
3. brushes
4. white drawing paper A4 size
5. green paper for background

See what sunflowers look like. Show photographs of French sunflower fields. Children draw a field full of sunflowers with oilpastels. When finished, the background has to be painted with water colour in green or bluegreen. The oilpastel will resist the watercolour.

Spring bulbs

Spring bulbs, by students of grade 2

What spring bulbs do you know? Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. Maybe you know more spring flowers?
 
You need:

1. spring bulbs or pictures of them
2. white drawing paper A4 size
3. crayons
4. wash bowl with water
5. liquid watercolour
6. brushes
7. newspapers
8. coloured paper for background

Draw big flowers and colour them with crayons on a white sheet. When the drawing is finished, place it in the wash bowl. Splash liquid watercolour on the drawing with a brush. The liquid watercolour will run off into the water. Move the sheet, so the colour can spread over the drawing. Because the crayonlines are fat, they will resist the liquid watercolour. Let the drawings dry on a newspaper. Paste the artwork on a coloured background.