colourful tissue paper winter trees

White snow and blue skies are not something we see a lot of here in the winter.

But that does not stop us from making colourful tissue paper winter trees.

This was a multi-step, multi-day project, just as my friend Barb from Grade ONEderful said it would be.

First we painted the sky ( 11 x 14" paper) with watered down blue tempera paint.  We have been into painting with sponges when filling in bigger spaces - sponge painting is fast and can create interesting textures.

While our blue sky paint was drying, we glue cut up tissue paper squares onto white paper.

As a concession to our kindergarten-ness, I made three different tree templates for the kids to choose from.  They could focus their gluing on the tree spaces rather than filling up the whole paper.

 The trees (and trunks that I had created) were glued on.  We talked about composition and placement.  And then the kids glued them where ever they wanted to!

The last step was adding white or silver snowflakes to the sky. (We have our fingers crossed that we will see some snow this winter!)

Single colour trees, multi-coloured trees, striped trees, and even cut down trees - they look awesome and add some much needed colour to the grey dreariness outside.