Paper plate wreaths are a pretty common activity to make in preschool but when my students made their pine needle paper plate wreaths, I thought they were simply beautiful…
We have a wreath hanging on our classroom door that has pine needles, pinecones, and berries on it. Â I shared the wreath with my students before sending them off to the art table. At the art table, the children found paper plates (with the center already cut out of them), pine needles, pinecones, red paint, and glue…
The children easily understood what to do with the materials and went right at it. The children added glue to the paper plate first…
Perhaps the narrow plate made the children naturally leery of adding too much glue but this process requires lots of glue, so I did have to stop by and encourage the children to keep adding more glue.  In fact, the more glue the better…
Once there is lots of glue on the paper plate, it is time to start decorating….
The children added pine needles and a pine cone to their paper plate…
The pine needles didn’t lay flat on the paper plate and the pine cone was rather large so this is why lots of glue was needed. The children arranged their pieces around the plate then added some paint “berries”to finish it off and to add some color…
The children squeezed red paint on top of their pine needles to make their berries…
Some of the children made dots for berries and other children preferred to make squiggly lines around the paper plate and over the pine needles…
And one child decided to make her wreath quite simple which I thought was unique and lovely too…
The children did an amazing job making their wreaths and once they finished adding berries, we set them aside to dry overnight…
I was worried that the pine needles and pinecones might not stick to the paper plates very well, but the next day – everything was sticking just enough to stay in place yet still branch out away from the paper plate. The children’s wreaths actually turned out just as beautiful as our wreath on the door. No, they were more beautiful than our wreath on the door!..
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