Mother's Day Art with a Gorgeous Mixed-Media Hand Print Bouquet

This is one of my favorite Mother’s Day art projects the preschoolers have made. Of course, I’m biased, and I always think their art is beautiful!

The kids’ love of our drip-drop coffee filter flowers inspired their Mother’s Day art.

Are you following Fun-A-Day’s MOTHER’S DAY Pinterest board?

I touch on this a little bit more towards the end of the post, but this doesn’t have to be labeled a “Mother’s Day art project”.

Depending on your students’ lives, it might just be a special art project for their loved ones! Use the idea as you see fit.

Mixed-Media Mother’s Day Art Using Kids’ Hand Prints

While I love process art, and we do a TON in preschool, I also love creating keepsake art with kids’ hand prints.

The kiddos made the decisions for what their art would look like, and they did a lot of the “work”, but I also helped quite a bit. Just keepin’ it real!

Materials we used

White canvas
3 coffee filter flowers
Tempera paint
White glue

How to prep for our Mother’s Day art project

Make sure the kiddos have made their coffee filter flowers. In most cases, my students had more than enough to choose from. However, there were a few who didn’t make any the first time around.

If that was the case, I asked them to make some. It wasn’t a hardship on anyone, let me tell you!

Whip up some homemade Mod Podge. There are a lot of ways to do that, but I simply add water to plain old white school glue. I add enough water to make it easy to paint with.

Then it’s on to making the Mother’s Day art project with the kids!

How to Make the Mixed-Media Bouquet

Have each child choose three coffee filter flowers for their canvas.

After choosing three flowers, let the children paint the top half of the canvas with the watery glue mixture.

Carefully have the kiddo place the coffee filter flowers one at a time. Encourage them to gently press down so that the flowers adhere to the glue on the canvas.

Once all of the flowers are in place, they can gently paint on more homemade Mod Podge if needed.

When the flowers are added, have the child choose a paint color for his hand. At this point, I grabbed a baby wipe and a paper towel.

While the student was picking a color, I blotted off any extra glue mixture with the paper towel (to prevent the colors from running). I used the baby wipe to remove any bits of color that may have come off the flower.

Once a paint color has been chosen, have the child paint his hand. Some may request help with this, and that’s okay!

Help the child situate his hand towards the bottom, middle of the canvas. Work with the child to make a hand print there!

Using a fine paintbrush, add stems from the flowers to the hand print. This way, it looks like the child is holding a bouquet of flowers for his mom. This part I did on my own, but the children didn’t seem to mind one bit.

Be sure to add the name and date at the bottom of the canvas!

I adore how the children’s Mother’s Day art bouquets turned out, and I hope their mamas do too! What are your favorite Mother’s Day art ideas?

Not Just for Moms

While we made this art project for the preschoolers’ mamas, it definitely isn’t only meant for moms. Dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, foster parents, and more will love it I am sure!

I do want to take a moment to encourage you to make gifts for the special people in your students’ lives. And of course you already know that some children have both parents in their lives, some have only one, and others have foster parents or grandparents taking care of them.

If you have kids in your class that don’t have their mothers in their lives, I see nothing wrong with changing the name of this art project! It doesn’t need to be Mother’s Day art.

Just tell the children that they’ll get to make a special art project for the special people in their lives. It’s all about being aware of the kids’ home lives and being supportive of the people they consider special to them.

Spring Resources for Preschool Teachers

If you’re looking to save some time planning for preschool, be sure to pop over to Preschool Teacher 101. You’ll find a bevy of done-for-you resources like preschool lesson plans, math and STEM activities, and literacy packs.

Check out our membership options for even more ways to save your time.

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