Updated February 11, 2023
Early fall is the perfect time for sunflower art for toddlers!
We love sunflowers and I always have a sunflower craft ready for our kids to do for the back-to-school week.
Sunflower seeds are inexpensive and can be used for sensory bins and other fall projects with your toddler.
Beautiful Fall Sunflower Art For Toddlers
Supplies:
Sunflower Seeds
Green, yellow and black, or blue construction paper
Scissors
White school glue
Sunflowers in our kitchen
Photo: Maternity Comfort Solutions
Instructions:
Invite your child to cut long strips of yellow paper.
Using scissors isn’t an easy skill to master for a toddler.
One way to make it easier is to draw lines on the paper and encourage your toddler to cut slowly.
The strips do not need to be perfectly straight.
We want our children to enjoy arts and crafts.
It is no fun if doing arts and crafts feels like a chore.
Fold the paper strips in half and cut each strip a second time.
Help your toddler fold the strips in half and show them wear to make the second cut.
Create a circle of glue in the center of the black or blue construction paper to make the head of the sunflower.
Place the strips of paper around the circle of glue.
Encourage your toddler to place the yellow strips all the way around the circle of glue.
Next, add a second circle of glue on top of the original circle, covering the newly laid yellow strips of paper.
Loop each strip up towards the center, press firmly for a second before moving to the next strip.
Add a generous amount of glue to the center of the yellow paper loops.
Sprinkle on sunflower seeds, spreading them out to fill in the center of the flower.
Add the sunflower seeds to the center of the flower and press them down onto the paper.
Invite your child to cut a stem and leaves from the green paper.
Glue the stem and leaves on the paper.
Allow to dry and display.
Tips for making arts and crafts enjoyable for your toddler:
- Play music! Music can help improve mood and draw out their creativity. music helps fuel our imagination. Toddlers are at the right age to really begin enjoying music, and it’s a huge part of development!
- Encourage movement. Asking a toddler to sit for too long is a recipe for disaster. This is a super important step, whether taking breaks to get up and move around a little or incorporating movement into it. We want our toddlers to find art time to be a joy, not a chore.
- Discuss their art with them. Write down the words they use to describe their art if they want you to.
- Allow them to do more than one art project. Get them more paint and paper if they ask.
- If the weather allows go outside and do art projects outside in nature. Fresh air and exercise are always appreciated, and the environment might give some much-needed inspiration for arts and crafts!
- Laugh, sing, and smile.
- Take nature walks and collect items like leaves, acorns, feathers, flowers, and rocks to use in art projects. Bring your camera and take lots of pictures of changing leaves or animals you might see getting ready for winter. Look for squirrels scurrying about searching for acorns. Be sure to talk about the things they see and hear. Point out the bright blue sky and listen to the leaves crunching underneath your feet.
Why is doing arts and crafts important for toddlers?
Arts and crafts are important activities for toddlers to get ample opportunity to engage in every day.
These activities encourage creativity, imagination, and language skills!
The best way for young children to learn is through play and doing activities that bring them joy.
Since arts and crafts require working with objects, it teaches toddlers about different shapes, textures, and colors.
They will also learn how things work and how they match.
Creativity is also developed from arts and crafts, as it encourages kids to experiment and play in a relaxed and fun environment.
Children often have an immense imagination, and the best way to turn this endless imagination into something productive is through arts and crafts.
There are various colors, shapes, and materials, not forgetting activities that kids can choose from.
This allows them to explore multiple options and select the most enjoyable ones.
And maybe through this, they can discover an enjoyable hobby such as drawing, which can develop into a lucrative career in the future.
Arts and crafts are one of the most important activities that foster creativity in kids.
Toddlers are very visual about anything that transpires within their surroundings and are generally sound absorbers of information.
However, not all kids are the same; some are shy and never comfortable using words to express themselves.
Such kids often find different ways to express their feelings, emotions, and thoughts, and arts and crafts grant them what they require to communicate effectively.
Arts and crafts are a safe setting that kids can control and shape in any way they desire.
Arts and Crafts help toddlers develop their social skills.
Arts and crafts are excellent in creating a common ground for all kids with different interests and backgrounds.
This is because most kids like developing things using their hands and have the chance to see what others have created.
In creativity, nothing will matter, be it race, gender or age; the only thing that matters is what they can make out of their imagination.
Fortunately, kids usually are anxious and curious so, when they see another child who has created what they like, they will happily approach them.
Through that interaction, kids will be socializing with others from different gender, races, and age.
What are Fine Motor Skills?
Fine motor skills are essential for using the small muscles in fingers, hands, and arms.
These muscles are important during activities such as drawing, buttoning, constructing with blocks, and zipping up a coat.
Fine motor skills impact your child’s ability to do the above types of activities and their speed to complete them.
To ensure your child performs these tasks successfully, they will need lots of opportunities to practice and gain mastery in the early toddler years.
Some of the common fine motor skills are:
- Pencil skills like coloring and drawing
- Scissor skills such as cutting and rearranging the paper
- Doll dressing and manipulation
- Dressing, i.e., zips, buttons, lacing, and tying shoelaces
- Basic hygiene like brushing teeth, washing their face, and combing their hair
- Construction skills such as puzzles and Duplo
Why are fine motor skills important for toddlers?
It’s hard not to emphasize the importance of fine motor skills in everyday life because they enable us to perform simple tasks.
If a child is unable to complete the basic everyday tasks, it will take a toll on their self-esteem, affecting their play, academics, and co-curricular activities.
Also, children without the appropriate fine motor skills will find it hard to get independent life skills such as feeding or dressing, which will have many implications on relationships with other peers.
That is why fine motor activities are so important for your toddler to get plenty of opportunities to engage in.
Thankfully, there are amazing activities that you can do to help kickstart those developments outside of normal day-to-day life.
Arts and crafts often require children to use their hands in a specific manner; through this coordination, they will develop bilateral coordination and fine motor skills.
For instance, drawing lines and dots, tearing a piece of paper, or cutting it with shears are demanding assignments in terms of mastery, and children enjoy doing them.
Such tasks can help a toddler develop faster and become more skilled in other everyday activities like dressing.
We talk a lot about arts and crafts helping to improve toddlers’ imagination, creativity, and fine motor skills but did you know it can help them develop gross motor skills too?
When I do activities with our toddlers I’ll let them help us with the setup and with the cleanup.
I let them walk around while they’re doing art to help improve their gross motor skills.
Their ability to carry things and walk at the same time are skills that we as adults take for granted but those are skills that we have to learn.
So don’t forget to allow your toddler to set up for arts and crafts.
Allow them to help clean up, let them help put away the glue, paints, carry the paintbrushes to the sink. those types of activities would be really helpful with her gross motor development
More fun Sunflower arts and crafts!
Final Thoughts
We hope your toddler enjoys this Fall Sunflower Art For Toddlers
Keeping your active 2-year-old busy can be difficult and challenging
Let your toddler explore and create as much art as they want.
Spend time on arts and crafts every day.
If you are in the kitchen making dinner, set them up at the table with an art project.
It will allow you to get dinner made and provide them with an opportunity to practice their fine motor and language skills.
You can never go wrong with providing your toddler with lots of opportunities for arts and crafts!
