Chrysanthemum Preschool Name Art - Fantastic Fun & Learning

Preschoolers love to see their own names on display. Not only is this fun for them, it also helps them learn to recognize and spell their name. We recently designed a full week of home preschool and preschool classroom lesson plans to go along with the book Chrysanthemum, a book whose central theme and lesson links to the main character’s name. This book is wonderful for teaching many concepts related to names, flowers, self-confidence and more. One of the activities we included in the lesson plan set is this beautiful name art project. Kids will have fun creating art that features their own name and then putting it on display.

Materials

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Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
Watercolor paper
Watercolors and paintbrush
Dish of water
Flowers-Mums if possible
Glue

After reading the book together set out your materials as an art invitation. Let kids start by painting the background. We decided to use a mix of blues, greens and purples for the background, but if your child prefers different colors let him or her lead the way.

While the background dries spend some time investigating the flowers you have collected. Then have kids choose a couple of them to remove the petals from. This is great fine motor practice!

Sort the flower petals by color as you go to incorporate a little math.

Once your background is mostly dry prepare to spell out the child’s name. You can either leave a template with a piece of chalk or pencil and let the child use glue to trace the template, or you can do the glue step for your child depending on his or her fine motor control.

Then it’s time for kids to decorate their name with flower petals.

Let them create a design of their choice. Many will experiment with different types of patterns as they go along, incorporating even more math practice as they do.

Once they finish let the names dry completely. Then hang them on display. They make beautiful spring wall art!

And if you have a lot of extra flowers petals like we did don’t just toss them out! Use them for more sensory play or art. We love flower petal water play, so Tinker immediately knew what she wanted to do with our leftover petals. She spent the rest of the afternoon mixing up some flower soup and playing with it.

Get a full week of playful Chrysanthemum activity ideas!

Continue the learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.