Flag Fun! Super Simple Craft to Celebrate the 4th

Hi! Caitlin here. As many of you know, I'm a pediatric physical therapist in addition to co-owner of THL. One of my occupational therapy colleagues showed me this simple and sweet flag craft (thanks Kassie!) and I had to try it with my 3 and a half year old, Lena.

She loved it, so now I'm sharing it with you guys. Try it at home, or better yet - come to The Happy Lark this weekend! We'll have all the materials prepped and ready for you. The best part? This craft is INCLUDED with your day pass or membership!

We used this flag template from Lakeshore Learning. I printed it out, cut a blue square (about 4 inches by 4 inches), and cut up some 1 inch squares of red and white tissue paper. 

Lena applied glue to the back of the flag template, and then pasted it to construction paper. Next, she glued on the blue square. 

Then, we had to figure out our tissue-paper-glueing-technique. First, Lena tried crumpling the paper and applying a dot of glue to the back. This was a bit too hard for her. We tried having her dip the crumpled tissue paper into glue. This worked pretty well until she got excited and rubbed the paper into the glue repetitively until it disintegrated. 

For us, the simplest and most fun option was for me to put dots of glue on the flag. Then she stuck on the tissue paper. She enjoyed experimenting with how small to crumple the paper or trying more than one square of paper at a time!

In addition to working on fine motor skills, this craft gave us a chance to introduce American history ("see, there are 13 stripes just like the 13 original colonies") as well as concepts like counting ("let's count how many stars you put on!) and patterns ("see the stripes are in a pattern - red then white, red then white"). 

I hope you enjoy this craft as much as we did! Lena loved it so much, she chose to take it for show-and-tell at her preschool this morning. 

Love,

Caitlin & Lena

Psst... do you have a craft-lover on your hands like me? Check out Faber Castell, our favorite brand for high quality, kid friendly, affordable arts and crafts supplies.