We Are Leaping Into St. Patrick's Day Fun!!

We have an extra day in February this year - it's Leap Year!! - but we were ready to get into our St. Patrick's Day art.

This project is a decoupage project. We learned that the word decoupage is a fancy French art word that simply means gluing down a "page" or paper. We also read the Legend of St. Patrick before we started gluing!

Each little artist decided whether to create a 4 leaf clover or a Shamrock  (3 leaves). We used a square (8x8) Dick Blick canvas that I painted blue in advance. Our leaves were heart shaped paper cut outs. Our stem was a triangle of paper and the button in the center

 is a circle.

Aren't they great?? And they so reflect the artists personalities... some are lined up perfectly, some are all the same paper even though there were lots of choices, some are swimming in Mod Podge and some of us who prefer to keep stuff off of our fingers had a hard time dealing with all the glue needed :)

The first two classes of 4 year olds really didn't want Mod Podge all over their fingers but the last class embraced it and they said they LOVED decoupage!!!

Sorry about the pictures - the lighting is terrible in the classrooms and I was probably hurrying because Mod Podge was going everywhere - haha! I lined up all the heart cut out choices assembly line style so they could choose their own papers at their own pace. The Mod Podge was applied with foam brushes and fingers!! I used my Crop-A-Dile to punch the holes for the fuzzy stick hanger. ( Can't call them pipe cleaners anymore!) I put a small black Sharpie dot in the center of each canvas to help my little artists get the points of the hearts headed the right way. At four and just turned five getting everything turned the correct way can be a challenge and this helps them to be successful.

We used foam brushes to spread the Mod Podge and I always put plastic table cloths so we can be as messy as we want.
Now we have lots of lucky Irish green to help us get excited about St. Patrick's Day.

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